Airport, Baltic, Estonia, Tourism, Transport

The company offers its apologies to clients and confirms that it takes claims related to delays or cancelations of flights very seriously, SmartLynx said.

According to SmartLynx CEO, Zygimantas Surintas, the blacklisting of the company resulted from an unfortunate event and poor communication. He said the company has always paid out compensations related to delays and cancelations of flights and said case was an unfortunate event.  

The dispute concerned the Tallinn-Salzburg flight of Jan. 20 that was canceled a couple of days before scheduled departure. As a substitute, the company offered to passengers a flight that reached the destination four hours later than the original flight. 

A claim filed by a passenger with the Consumer Disputes Committee via the flight disruption claims handling company Flagito after the carrier had not responded to an earlier claim by the same passenger was initially rejected by the carrier on the grounds that the passenger had been notified of the cancelation of the flight.

After getting familiar with the reasoning behind the claim, specifically that the carrier would have escaped the claim if it had notified the passenger more than 14 days in advance, SmartLynx agreed to pay the passenger 400 euros but refused to pay collection costs and fines for delay. 

With its ruling on Feb. 25, the Consumer Disputes Committee satisfied the passenger's claim in full. Since the carrier did not pay the full amount of compensation within 30 days of the decision, the Consumer Disputes Committee added SmartLynx to its blacklist.