Judgment of the Court (Ninth Chamber) of 11 July 2019.
CS and Others v České aerolinie a.s.
Request for a preliminary ruling from the Městský soud v Praze.
Reference for a preliminary ruling — Transport — Common rules on compensation and assistance to passengers in the event of denied boarding and of cancellation or long delay of flights — Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 — Article 5(1)(c) — Article 7(1) — Right to compensation — Connecting flights — Flights consisting of two flights operated by different air carriers — Long delay in relation to the second flight with points of departure and arrival outside the European Union and operated by a carrier established in a non-Member State).
Case C-502/18. (2019)
Language: English

That decision was upheld on appeal by the referring court, the Městský soud v Praze (Prague City Court, Czech Republic). In its judgment of 26 April 2016, that court held, inter alia, that there was no need to refer to the Court a request for a preliminary ruling under Article 267 TFEU, since the interpretation of Article 3(5) of Regulation No 261/2004 could be clearly inferred from the wording of that regulation and from the judgment of the Court of 28 February 2013, Folkerts (C‑11/11, EU:C:2013:106). In that regard, the referring court considered that it follows from that provision that České aerolinie was directly liable to the passengers concerned for the harm they suffered on account of the delay in the part of the connecting flights operated by the company Etihad Airways, since a constituent element of the legal concept of ‘agency’ is that the acts of the agent can be directly attributed to the principal. Further, according to the referring court, that interpretation of the regulation was entirely pertinent to the facts of the case before it and was fair, in that the liability of the contractual carrier stems from the contract and the carrier cannot be relieved of liability on the ground that the delayed part of the flight was operated by another party, and in that the situation was comparable to any other form of subcontracting.
That judgment was however set aside by the Ústavní soud (Constitutional Court, Czech Republic), by a judgment of 31 October 2017. In its judgment, the Ústavní soud (Constitutional Court) instructed the referring court to examine the arguments of České aerolinie in which it relied on a judgment of the Bundesgerichtshof (Federal Court of Justice, Germany) where that court held that the liability of the contractual carrier could not be established where it was not itself the operating air carrier.

Legal relationship diagram (Graphviz):
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