COMPENSATION - CURE OR CURSE?

The headline read;
AIRLINES ORDERED: PAY OUT IF FLIGHTS ARE DELAYED
It might also have read;
LANDMARK JUDGEMENT: FLYING SET TO BECOME PERILOUS 

Our law courts, or more specifically, judges, belong on another planet, preferably unpopulated, where their rulings couldn’t be so harmful to health. For years they have identified with the criminal rather than the victim but this one is a peach, set to make victims of us all. 

In essence, airlines will now be forced to pay up to £470 in compensation per passenger for flight delays; which now includes those caused by technical faults.

Last year I was at Detroit airport, waiting to board an aircraft for the second leg of my journey to San Francisco, when they announced a three hour delay due to a technical fault. An American lady strode over to the flight crew who were waiting at the boarding gate and in a braying shriek, berated them. She told them, at some length, about her own schedule and the importance of them keeping to theirs, while the captain quietly explained that the aircraft was simply a machine and that he was unable to offer any more than his sympathy for the delay. Nevertheless, he added, the fault needing fixing. Eventually, she stamped a foot and strode back to her seat. I was standing nearby, at the desk and caught the eye of the captain before giving him the ‘thumbs up’ sign with a smile of encouragement and the comment, “Fixing is good.” 

He gave me a smile of gratitude and a small shrug, as if to say, “Tell me about it!” It took four hours to have the part flown in and the flight was delayed by a total of six.

So, here’s the thing. An airbus A380 carries around 600 passengers. At £470 a head, that sort of a delay on a long-haul flight could cost the airline £282,000, thanks to the most recent Supreme Court ruling.
 
Aircraft are simply machines, albeit very complicated ones and the people who operate them are only human, with normal survival instincts. Except that the ones on the ground are driven by the need for commercial survival as well as the physical sort.
  
So at a quarter of a million pounds a pop, how many ‘minor’ repairs will be deemed economically unviable or deferrable?

For the record, if such considerations result in the worst happening, perhaps the death certificates should show the ‘Cause of Death’ to be EU REGULATION 261/2004. 

Just a question of judgement really.