Rejected for "extraordinary circumstances": how to test the airline's reason

The four questions a reason has to pass

Article 5(3) excuses the airline only if the disruption was caused by extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken. That is four tests, and the airline has to pass all of them:

1. Is the cause on the list of things that can be extraordinary? Not inherent in the normal exercise of the airline’s activity and beyond its actual control (Wallentin-Hermann).
2. Did it actually affect your flight? A storm elsewhere, or a strike that ended before your departure, is not a cause of your delay.
3. Was it unavoidable? The airline must show it had no way round it — including re-routing you on another carrier.
4. Did the airline take all reasonable measures? Spare aircraft, standby crew, rebooking — deploying the resources a reasonable airline keeps for disruption.

Reasons that do not hold up

• Technical problems of any kind, including unexpected component failures — inherent in operating aircraft (Wallentin-Hermann, van der Lans). The exception is a hidden manufacturing defect or sabotage, which the airline must prove.
• Crew shortages, rostering, crew timing out — the airline’s own operation (Krüsemann, TAP v flightright).
• Strikes by the airline’s own staff — inherent in running an airline (Airhelp v SAS, Krüsemann).
• Late inbound aircraft / knock-on delays — judged on the original cause; if that was operational, the knock-on is compensable.
• “Operational reasons” with no detail — has not passed test 1.

Reasons that can hold up — with proof

• Air-traffic-control restrictions — extraordinary in principle, but the airline must show the restriction applied to your flight at the relevant time and that other options were exhausted.
• Severe weather — where it made the flight impossible or unsafe; a de-icing queue caused by too few de-icing rigs is operational.
• Bird strike — extraordinary (Pešková), though the resulting delay must still have been unavoidable.
• Third-party strikes — ATC, airport staff, ground handlers employed by someone else.
• Security and safety events, closed runways, medical emergencies on board — depending on the facts.

How to test it in practice

Ask the airline, in writing, for the specific circumstance, the time it applied, and evidence — a NOTAM, an ATC slot message, a METAR weather report, a strike notice. Check whether other flights departed from the same airport in the same hour; publicly available flight-tracking history often shows they did. Ask what the airline did to avoid the delay and why you could not be re-routed. If the answers are missing or generic, say so in your escalation: the enforcement body and the ADR schemes apply exactly these tests, and the airline’s silence on them is the point. The cause-by-cause case law is on the extraordinary circumstances page; an “ATC” reason has its own checks on the air traffic control page.

What survives even when the reason holds

Extraordinary circumstances remove fixed compensation only. The right to a refund or re-routing (Article 8) and to meals, hotel and transport (Article 9) survive whatever the cause; the Court held in McDonagh that even the Icelandic ash cloud did not suspend care. If you paid for those yourself, that is a separate reimbursement claim.