This class action brings its first count under the Montreal Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules for International Carriage by Air of 1999. However, it also claims breach of contract and RICO Act charges. At issue is a missed Aeroflot Russian Airlines and Finnair OYJ flight.
Dmitry Bandurin, Svetlana Bandurina, and Alexander Bandurin were returning to Chicago, Illinois after a visit to Moscow, Russian Federation, via Helsinki, Finland. All three of those countries are signatories to the Montreal Convention.
The Bandurins were scheduled to leave on August 5, 2018 on the 10:45 Finnair flight AY 6840 to Helsinki, which was shared with Aeroflot as SU 2206. In Helsinki, the family was to connect to Finnair flight AY9 to Chicago.
The complaint says, the family arrived at Sheremetyevo Airport’s Terminal D at around 8:20 in the morning. Check-in for the flight was operated by Aeroflot, in only two lines, which the complaint alleges delayed the family’s check-in until 9:30. After that, they went through security screening and passport control.
Their flight was to depart from Terminal F. Although it usually takes fifteen to twenty minutes to get to Terminal F, the complaint says that Svetlana Bandurina has a congenital difficulty with her hip which made the trip take longer.
The family arrived eighteen to nineteen minutes before flight time, and although the aircraft was still at the gate, the complaint claims they were not allowed to board. This meant that the family missed both the flight to Helsinki and their connecting flight to Chicago.
The complaint alleges that the Aeroflot representative refused to help the family find replacement flights. Instead, they were forced to buy new tickets at a price of about 170,000 rubles, or $2640 US dollars. The complaint also alleges that the family was not provided with any meaningful care by the airlines.
The family finally arrived in Chicago more than twenty-four hours after they had been scheduled to and the complaint alleges they missed work because of that. They also had incurred expenses for accommodations, food, and transportation that they would otherwise not have had to pay.
Two classes have been proposed for this action.
- The first is all persons living in the US who (a) had a confirmed reservation on flight SU 2206 from Moscow to Helsinki on August 5, 2018, (b) which was operated by Aeroflot, (c) where the persons were not allowed to board the flight, (d) and were ordered by Aeroflot to buy new tickets at their own expense, (e) where the person was affected by the delay for at least three hours.
- The second class is similar but instead of specifying a single flight, it includes all persons who had a confirmed reservation on any flight operated by Aeroflot to or from the US since January 2004 and who incurred additional expenses in having to purchase another ticket.
Topic: Consumer