Finland's national airline Finnair has not followed recommendations by the Consumer Disputes Board to reimburse some passengers for cancelled and delayed flights.
The airline has said it will not pay out reimbursements if passengers apply for the compensation after a period of two months.
According to the Consumer Disputes Board, the reasonable application period is five months and said that people can even apply beyond that period under special circumstances.
Finnair has refused to pay out compensation to affected passengers as the board recommended last spring. The state majority-owned company has also said it will not comply with other decisions by the board regarding such matters.
This is not the first time Finnair and the board have clashed. In 2018, the board blacklisted the company for similar reasons.
At the time, it was reported that the Consumer Disputes Board received 700 complaints about the carrier in 2017, a figure that had doubled over the previous five years.
The board's chair, Pauli Ståhlberg, said that Finnair's decisions are exceptional among large companies.
"[The behaviour] undermines the credibility of the entire consumer protection system and endangers the legal protection of consumers," Ståhlberg said, adding that the board's decisions often concern the rights of numerous consumers.
In practice, the Consumer Disputes Board is the only legal recourse that people have in resolving disputes about consumer and housing matters.
The board processes around 6,000 consumer disputes every year and issues decisions on about 3,000 of them. More than half of those result in refund recommendations.
Ståhlberg also pointed out that firms which do not pay out compensation as recommended either no longer exist or cannot afford to pay them.
The conflict between Finnair and the board concerns a flight from Helsinki to Phuket, Thailand in late October 2017, which was delayed by more than three hours.
A man and woman who were passengers on that flight filed for compensation in mid-January of 2018 and then filed a complaint with the board after Finnair refused to pay compensation.
Finnair said that the passengers did not make their claim within a reasonable period of time and also said the delay was caused by a manufacturing defect in the new aircraft.
However, according to the board, there is no legal time restriction on filing complaints and that the two months mentioned in the law is not the maximum period of compensation eligibility.
Additionally, the board noted that a manufacturing defect in the aircraft is not an exceptional circumstance exempting the airline's liability.
On these grounds, the board recommended a 600 euro payment to each passenger.
Meanwhile, Finnair's communications chief, Mari Kanerva, said the company considers the board's decisions to be recommendations, not legally binding and that the complaint period for compensation is not regulated by law.
The firm's stance is that two months is a reasonable period of time to apply for compensation, and Kanerva said there has been no discussion about changing this policy.
"This is also more in line with other reclamation times in the industry. For example, in the case of luggage delays, the complaint period is three weeks," Kanerva said, adding that the airline often needs to thoroughly investigate the reasons behind delays or cancellations in these cases.
"For example, determining the weather conditions at an airport or the ground services situation after a period of five months can be very challenging and time consuming," she said, adding that Finnair receives thousands of compensation applications every year.
"We do not disclose total compensation amounts. The majority of customers apply for standard compensation within the deadline," Kanerva explained.
However, Consumer Disputes Board chair Ståhlberg said he does not find it credible that determining reasons for flight delays and cancellations after a period of two months would be particularly difficult.
"It feels a bit flimsy, because no other activity is recorded as much as flight activity," he said.
"The [board's] recommendations are made by a neutral, independent group of experts appointed by the Ministry of Justice. The decisions are justified and their form is comparable to a court's verdict," Ståhlberg said.
He added that state-owned companies in particular should set an example in following the decisions, recommendations and instructions of consumer protection authorities.
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