Transavia ordered to pay compensation for flight delay caused by passengers beating up pilot

Transavia has to pay compensations to passengers for a flight delay caused by the pilot being attacked by two passengers, Luchtvaartnieuws.nl reported on Tuesday. The airline claimed force majeure - unforeseeable circumstances out of their control - on the incident, but the court disagreed.

The incident happened on July 16th, 2015 after a flight from Schiphol to Barcelona. The pilot wanted to confirm the identity of two intoxicated passengers who behaved poorly during the flight. They refused to cooperate and the police were called in. The passengers tried to flee, and when the pilot tried to stop them, he was assaulted.

Afterwards the pilot and crew did not feel safe to fly back with new passengers and returned to Schiphol on their own. Another plane was sent for the waiting passengers, who eventually departed for Schiphol over 4 hours late.

According to the aviation site, the court ordered Transavia to pay passengers 4,500 euros in compensation, 575 euros on collection costs and about a thousand euros for the proceedings.