Crew member's death no excuse to avoid compensating passengers over delay, EU Court says

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The cancellation of a flight due to the sudden death of a crew member does not exempt an airline of its obligation to compensate passengers for the delay, the European Court of Justice said on Thursday.

The EU top court's judgment came in relation to a TAP Portugal flight that was cancelled on July 17, 2019, because the co-pilot was found dead in his hotel bed less than two hours before the scheduled departure time.

The 6:05 a.m. flight from Stuttgart to Lisbon was cancelled as its entire crew declared themselves unfit to fly due to the shock of the event. Passengers were ultimately flown to Lisbon by a replacement crew with a delay of more than 10 hours.

Several passengers claimed compensation for the delay, but TAP refused to pay as it claimed that the death of the co-pilot was an extraordinary circumstance which exempted it from its obligation to compensate passengers.

But the EU court dismissed that argument, saying that dealing with an unexpected absence, including due to illness or death, is "intrinsically linked" to the crew planning that is part of an airline's normal activities.

"However tragic and final it may be, the situation of an unexpected death is no different, from a legal point of view, from that in which a flight cannot be operated when such a member of staff has unexpectedly fallen ill shortly before the departure of the flight," the court said.

"The carrier must expect such unforeseen events to arise in the context of planning its crews and the working hours of its staff."

The case had originally been brought to the Stuttgart Regional Court, which asked the Court of Justice to interpret the EU's air passengers' rights regulation.

(Reporting by Bart Meijer; Editing by Bernadette Baum)