The airline company Vueling regularly refuses passengers at the boarding gate at theBarcelona airport For cause of overbooking. Many travelers have had the bitter experience of this, reports the French-speaking site Equinoxe, whose editorial staff is based in the Catalan capital.
For example, on June 20, a passenger bound for Paris-Orly received an email from Vueling a few hours before takeoff stating “ that the flight may be full. We are looking for volunteers who are willing to be transferred to another flight, in exchange for a reduction of 250 euros per person, to be used on your next reservation “. Volunteers must still present themselves at the boarding gate. The same day, another passenger, who was to take a flight for Nantes, was informed of the overbooking only upon his arrival at the airport. ” I did not worry, because the check-in counter told me that I was the only passenger in this situation so that I had a chance of getting on the plane. What was my surprise to see that there were actually about thirty of us at the boarding gate “, he relates to Equinox.
Overbooking on flights from Barcelona to Paris is recurrent, so much so that some see it as a “business”: “ I benefit from receiving the compensation of 250 euros, for a flight paid 50 euros at the origin, it is rather profitable. Either I leave with another flight during the day, or I go back to my apartment in Barcelona, Vueling reimburses the taxi », Says a French resident in Barcelona.
According to the European regulation of passenger rights, an airline which refuses to board you because it has sold more tickets than available seats on the plane, must compensate you 250 € (125 € if the delay is 2 hours at most ) for a flight up to 1,500 km, €400 (€200 if the delay is 3 hours or less) for a flight of 1,500 to 3,500 km, €400 (€200 if the delay is 3 hours or less ) for a flight of more than 3500 km within the European Union, and €600 (€300 if the delay is 4 hours or less) for a flight to a destination outside the EU.
