Last month I had the most standard and unambiguous case of flight delay you could have. Iberia flight cancelled due to technical issue (the gate screen even said "cancelled for techincal failure", I have a photo), all pax were sent to the sales desk, I got rebooked to arrive 24h later. A 1400 km flight in the EU, family of 4, I thought this was a very straightforward 4x250 = 1000 EUR compensation.
I filed a claim on their website on the same day I got home. Got a reply 1 month later with a simple standardized letter, "we're sorry for the inconvenience, we'll try to be better next time". No mention of the compensation. I can't even reply, I'd have to file a new claim, which of course will not be any different.

So I'm going to go through one of the specialized lawyers, and obviously I'll win this as there can't be any clearer and more obvious case. But I'll lose a good chunk of the money for the lawyer's fees. It makes me kind of mad that I have no option of getting the full amount of what is rightfully mine.

I know airlines make it really hard to claim compensation, and i have had claims denied in the past, but never was it such a simple and obvious case.

Is it safe to say Iberia denies every claim, no matter how obvious, and then waits hoping the customer quits? Are there any other airlines (or companies like insurance) that work the same way?

Norwegian! Never fly with them again.

I had two Iberia flights cancelled within the same month due to technical issues, one from GIG-MAD and another from IBZ-PMI...so €850 in total. IB's initial response was that they were not required to do so under prevailing EU regulations, but when I pointed out to them that they were obliged to do so (with the various EU court cases as support) even then they refused and dug in... Finally, I wrote to the Spanish Civil Aviation body who responded that in their view IB was liable for the full indemnity amount. When I forwarded that, IB recognized this and said they were "in discussions" with the authorities... and waited to hear nothing back. Finally I sent a letter to the CEO of Iberia together with all supporting document, copying in the Spanish authorities, and within a few weeks from that letter, the €850 was in my bank account... I didn't use a specialized company but persevered... more out of principal that the amount... I find the U.S. carriers the most difficult to get to comply with EU regulations on their European operations... AF has always been straightforward with the indemnities... just my experience.

TYCOON wrote:

I had two Iberia flights cancelled within the same month due to technical issues, one from GIG-MAD and another from IBZ-PMI...so €850 in total. IB's initial response was that they were not required to do so under prevailing EU regulations, but when I pointed out to them that they were obliged to do so (with the various EU court cases as support) even then they refused and dug in... Finally, I wrote to the Spanish Civil Aviation body who responded that in their view IB was liable for the full indemnity amount. When I forwarded that, IB recognized this and said they were "in discussions" with the authorities... and waited to hear nothing back. Finally I sent a letter to the CEO of Iberia together with all supporting document, copying in the Spanish authorities, and within a few weeks from that letter, the €850 was in my bank account... I didn't use a specialized company but persevered... more out of principal that the amount... I find the U.S. carriers the most difficult to get to comply with EU regulations on their European operations... AF has always been straightforward with the indemnities... just my experience.

I think writing a letter to the CEO as well as CC'ing in the aviation authorities of where the flight took off, landed, and where the airline is based as well as making a big fuss on social media should work.
Post a copy of the letter on Iberia's facebook page and mention you've sent it to the CEO and aviation authorities, then have a few friends share it. That will be more than enough to get their attention.

In my experience, European airlines act as if the regulation does not exist and only respond to claims made by lawyers. That way they hope to (and probably successfully so) deter most claimants.
US airlines are generally much more forthcoming with that.

As a general tip, whenever you complain to any company, bypass their low level customer service reps. I always direct my complaints directly to the CEO of any corporation I write to. They will not ignore it, and you will hear back from them or (more likely the bigger the company is) a high level subordinate, like the VP of Customer Relations or similar. Much more likely to get stuff done that way. Has 100% success rate for me, and I do this a lot.

To write to the CEO directly is rather easy, contrary to what most people think. Just write an email to yourself and put every conceivable combination that might be the CEO’s email adress into Bcc. Just try a lot, like john.doe@company.com, j.doe@company.com and the likes, you get the drift. By putting it into Bcc, they don’t see it was a fishing expedition. You will get a mail back telling you yours was undeliverable to a load of the adresses. Just check which one did not generate such a server response and bingo, there is the CEO’s email for future use.

Don’t be shy when you have a legitimate claim.

aviationaware wrote:

US airlines are generally much more forthcoming with that.

Are they? I am filing my first claim ever under the EC 261/2004 (so far I have been lucky) and in response to my first e-mail they (AA) they are rejecting it by blatantly misinterpreting the regulation's "Right to care" and its implication for non-EU registered airlines on outbound flights (from the EU).

On a sidenote: Is it just my impression that AA si very good as far as inflight experience (TATL), with super helpful and generally nice cavin crews (all well groomed, all 50+) and a total disaster as far as anything involving ground personnel? Be it delayed baggage for 6 days (it took 5 days for AA to figure out that TRI is closer to Johnson City, TN than TYS), cancelled flights, AA check-in staff at TRI not being able to handle banal tasks such as issuing boarding pass for an adult, child and a lap infant resulting in being bumped off of a last leg of my itinerary... all that during one trip.
I have not flown AA since 1999.

Birdwatching wrote:

Last month I had the most standard and unambiguous case of flight delay you could have. Iberia flight cancelled due to technical issue (the gate screen even said "cancelled for techincal failure", I have a photo), all pax were sent to the sales desk, I got rebooked to arrive 24h later. A 1400 km flight in the EU, family of 4, I thought this was a very straightforward 4x250 = 1000 EUR compensation.
I filed a claim on their website on the same day I got home. Got a reply 1 month later with a simple standardized letter, "we're sorry for the inconvenience, we'll try to be better next time". No mention of the compensation. I can't even reply, I'd have to file a new claim, which of course will not be any different.

So I'm going to go through one of the specialized lawyers, and obviously I'll win this as there can't be any clearer and more obvious case. But I'll lose a good chunk of the money for the lawyer's fees. It makes me kind of mad that I have no option of getting the full amount of what is rightfully mine.

I know airlines make it really hard to claim compensation, and i have had claims denied in the past, but never was it such a simple and obvious case.

Is it safe to say Iberia denies every claim, no matter how obvious, and then waits hoping the customer quits? Are there any other airlines (or companies like insurance) that work the same way?

There are more ways to claim compensation than giving chunks of money to lawyers. What you can do is write a letter to the airline on your own, use a letter template that can be available online for free ( https://www.claimflights.co.uk/flight-d ... r-template ) or even check online how much compensation you are entitled to get if you use the Flight delay Compensation Calculator. If you are still unsuccessful in claiming compensation you can approach a claiming company which will probably charge you 25% of the claim (that's still less than the lawyer's fee). I would suggest that you should consider all the previous options and consider a claiming company in the end.
Cheers!