A SOLICITOR has won damages from easyJet after the budget airline cancelled the flight that he and his wife were due to catch to Paris to celebrate her birthday.

Brian Camp had accused easyJet of deceiving passengers by allowing them to check in and wait in the airport’s departure lounge, despite knowing that it had no crew to fly the plane.

Mr Camp, his wife, Julie, and four friends, had booked seats on the flight in August last year. When the party arrived at Liverpool John Lennon Airport to check in they were pleased to see their flight was listed as on time. But Mr Camp, of Wirral, Merseyside, said he later discovered that easyJet staff already knew that there were no pilots available to fly the plane. He claimed that easyJet had decided to save money by not flying in a crew from elsewhere.

Mr Camp said: “We were told the flight was on time and we settled down to the usual wait. The screens came up with the information that the flight was delayed and the staff on the ground said this was because of air-traffic delays.

“Eventually they told us to assemble at the desk to collect our luggage and then the truth came out. They didn’t have a crew to fly the plane and had effectively given up looking for one before we checked in.”

Last August, easyJet cancelled dozens of flights after admitting that it had been “stretched to the limit” by its annual growth rate of 60 per cent.

Mr Camp said easyJet had a contract with passengers to provide a flight “except for reasons beyond their reasonable control”.

He added: “Not having a crew is entirely within reasonable control. They could have flown in a crew from Luton where they had staff available. But that would have cost them money and they decided it would be cheaper to cancel the flight. The law has provisions to penalise companies who decide to breach a contract for commercial considerations.”

EasyJet offered passengers a refund. Some also received a free flight within three months and others were put up overnight in hotels and given a bus transfer to catch a flight from Luton the next day. But Mr Camp’s party decided to abandon the trip and spend the weekend in North Wales.

Mr Camp criticised easyJet for attempting to get him and his fellow passengers to waive their right to compensation.

He said: “When they returned our baggage they asked people to sign a document that accepted the compensation offered. There were 100 people in the queue and I told them to sign nothing. But a girl stepped forward and screamed, ‘Don’t listen to this man! He knows nothing.’ I told them I was a solicitor and knew a little about the law.

“At that stage they called a security officer and I was invited to leave the airport.”

Mr Camp agreed to accept damages from the airline in a private settlement, with an undertaking that he will not disclose the amount involved.

An easyJet spokeswoman said: “At that time we were experiencing problems with cabin-crew rostering. Those problems have been rectified.”

She refused to reveal how many flights the airline was now cancelling each month, saying: “We don’t collate that information for public use.”

Meanwhile, the Association of European Airlines yesterday accused Ryanair of misleading passengers over the source of its punctuality figures. Ryanair claims in its advertising to be the most punctual airline in Europe and attributes this ranking to a survey carried out by the association. However, the survey does not include budget airlines such as Ryanair and easyJet.

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