September Jurisdictional Update – Germany

The pandemic hit the German market very hard. The number of grounded flights led to skyrocketing passenger claims, resulting in thousands of claims in the short span of a couple of months.

80% of these cases made it to court, so the airlines are obliged to respond to them. Arnecke Sibeth Dabelstein had to hire eight new attorneys to handle the increased workload.

Some countries passed temporary laws during the pandemic to regulate passenger claims. The German politicians discussed doing the same, but in the end, it was a difficult law to pass and would have been political suicide to do so, so there were no government regulations to manage the number of passenger claims that occurred during this time.

Furthermore, there are fears that the Ukrainian/Russian war will affect energy prices in Europe this winter. All this could lead to inflations and much higher travel costs in the future.