Passenger rights

The (privately owned) railway undertaking Westbahn Management GmbH operates passenger rail transport services on the Vienna-Salzburg line in Austria. State owned ÖBB-Infrastruktur AG is the railway infrastructure manager in Austria and manages the major part of the Austrian rail network, including the Vienna-Salzburg line. It has at its disposal real-time data on the positions of all trains operating on the Austrian rail network it manages. The data is communicated to the various railway undertakings where it concerns those undertakings’ trains.

In the two cases decided by the German Supreme Court (BGH) recently, the plaintiffs each had booked long haul flights with non Commnunity carriers. In both cases the transportation consisted of two segments, a feeder flight departing from the EU to a non EU hub and a connecting flight departing from this hub outside the EU to the final destination. In both cases the connecting flights were delayed more than 8 hrs and the plaintiffs sued for compensation pursuant to Reg. (EC) 261/2004.

The plaintiff booked two flight tickets through an internet booking form on the airline's website. There was a note in the booking form saying "no name change permitted after booking. name has to comply with passenger's ID card". For the first ticket the plaintiff filled in his own name whereas for the second ticket he entered "still unknown" instead of first name and family name of the second passenger.

On June 29, 2012, the German Landgericht Frankfurt am Main has lodged a new refrence for preliminary ruling to the ECJ on the following question: