On 15 January 2026, the Court of Justice handed down its judgment in Case C‑45/24, Verein für Konsumenteninformation v Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij NV, on the interpretation of Article 8(1)(a) of Regulation (EC) No 261/2004. The request has been made in proceedings between the Verein für Konsumenteninformation (Austrian Association for Consumer Information, VKI) and Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij NV (“KLM”) concerning the reimbursement, following the cancellation of the air passengers’ flight, of the commission paid to the booking portal of the Opodo travel agency by those passengers when purchasing their airline tickets on that latter’s website.

Some passengers purchased airline tickets for round-trip flights from Vienna to Lima via Amsterdam, operated by KLM, on the Opodo booking portal, to which they paid a sum comprising the tickets’ price and an agency commission corresponding to their purchase on such portal. As a result of the cancellation of those flights, the passengers concerned obtained reimbursement of the tickets’ price from KLM, although that agency commission remained to be borne by them.

Although KLM had been collaborating with Opodo for at least a decade and, at the time of the purchase of the tickets, there was a contract providing for certain bonuses for the latter based on the number of KLM tickets sold, that contract did not settle the question whether an agency commission could be charged by Opodo to passengers and what its amount was. The VKI, to which the passengers assigned their claims for reimbursement of the cost of the airline tickets, therefore, brought an action before the Bezirksgericht Schwechat (District Court of Schwechat) taking the view that such reimbursement should have included that of the agency commission. Since the action was upheld, KLM brought an appeal before the Landesgericht Korneuburg (Regional Court of Korneuburg), which set aside that judgment.

The VKI, therefore, brought an appeal on a point of law before the Oberster Gerichtshof (Austrian Supreme Court; the “referring court”) which, in light of the need to interpret the relevant European legislation, decided to stay the proceedings and to ask to the Court of Justice  whether Article 8(1)(a) of Regulation No 261/2004, read in conjunction with Article 5(1)(a) thereof, must be interpreted as meaning that the price of the airline ticket to be taken into consideration for the purpose of determining the amount of the reimbursement owed by the air carrier to a passenger in the event of cancellation of a flight includes the difference between the amount paid by that passenger and the one received by that carrier, corresponding to a commission received by a company, which has acted as an intermediary, without such carrier being required to know the exact amount of that commission.

According to the Court an agency commission, as a component of the price of the airline ticket, must be regarded as necessary and, therefore, unavoidable in order to avail of the services offered by an air carrier, and as such its collection must be regarded as being authorised by the latter and as having to be reimbursed under Article 8(1)(a) of Regulation No 261/2004. By accepting that the intermediary issues airline tickets in its name and on its behalf, indeed, the air carrier is necessarily aware of that intermediary’s commercial practice of collecting an agency commission from the passenger when purchasing an airline ticket, even in the absence of any express contractual clause to that effect. It is not necessary for the air carrier, however, to know the exact amount of the agency commission in order for the passenger whose flight has been cancelled to be able to obtain its reimbursement.