On 16 October 2025, the Court of Justice handed down its judgment in Case C‑399/24, Airhelp Germany GmbH v Austrian Airlines AG, on the interpretation of Article 5(3) of Regulation (EC) No 261/2004. The request has been made in proceedings between AirHelp Germany GmbH (“AirHelp”) and Austrian Airlines AG (“Austrian Airlines”) concerning the latter’s refusal to compensate a passenger whose connecting flight was affected by a long delay.

A passenger had a confirmed single booking for a connecting flight from Iași to London via Vienna. The first flight, which was scheduled to arrive in Vienna at 15:50, however, only reached that destination with a delay of more than seven hours, due to which that passenger missed his second flight and did not reach London until the following morning. More specifically, the aircraft that was originally scheduled to operate from Iași to Vienna had been struck by lightning on its preceding flight shortly before landing in Iași under storm clouds, and had to undergo through a mandatory detailed safety inspection of that aircraft and, consequently, to its grounding for an indefinite period. Austrian Airlines, therefore, decided to charter, on the same day, a replacement aircraft from Vienna in order to be able to operate the flight in question, albeit with a delay of several hours.

In view of the above, the passenger affected by the delay assigned the related claim to AirHelp, which brought an action before the Bezirksgericht Schwechat (District Court of Schwechat) seeking to obtain from Austrian Airlines compensation according to Regulation No 261/2004. Since its action was dismissed, AirHelp brought an appeal before the Landesgericht Korneuburg (Regional Court of Korneuburg; 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 5(3) of Regulation No 261/2004 must be interpreted as meaning that the concept of “extraordinary circumstances”, referred to in that provision, covers a lightning strike to an aircraft with which a flight was to be operated, which led to mandatory safety inspections of that aircraft which resulted in its delayed return to service.

According to the Court, an event such as a lightning strike on an aircraft, which has led to mandatory safety inspections of the latter, cannot be regarded as inherent in the normal exercise of the activity of the air carrier on the sole ground that the state of the atmosphere is connected to that exercise and aircraft are designed in such a way to be able to withstand the effects of such events. Furthermore, the lightning strike on an aircraft, which has led to mandatory safety inspections, must be regarded as the result of a natural event outside the actual control of the air carrier concerned.