Lufthansa ordered to compensate passengers for 2014 Gaza war cancellation

An Israeli court ordered German airliner Lufthansa to compensate five Israeli passengers for a cancelled flight to Israel during the 2014 conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Rehovot Magistrate’s Court instructed the airline to pay NIS 3,560 to each passenger, as well as legal costs, saying that the high payout would serve “to encourage passengers to exercise their rights,” Israel Hayom reported Friday.

The passengers, all members of one family from Haifa, bought return tickets from Tel Aviv to Frankfurt for a trip to celebrate the bar mitzvah of the family’s son. But they discovered that the return flight on August 2, 2014, was cancelled after international flights to Israel were put on hold due to rocket fire close to Ben Gurion airport, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. The travelers were offered places on another flight from Munich, but that was subject to a seven-hour delay.

When the family sought compensation from Lufthansa, they were told that the flight had been canceled out of “political considerations.” This statement led Rehovot judge Eyal Baumgart to comment that, “As far as the court is concerned, the political situation in Israel has been stable since its establishment, and does not constitute and may not be a consideration in canceling the flight.”

Nir Ophir, the father of the family, told Israel Hayom that “After they told us our flight was canceled and took us to Munich, the flight there was delayed by seven hours. We had three children with us, whose bar mitzvah trip had become an arduous journey. The company… left us with a bad taste.”

He added: “I think the airlines should not underestimate us, and we are going to fight for our rights.”

The lawyer for Lufthansa, Asaf Shapiro, said in his closing summary that, “This incident took place during Operation Protective Edge, a time of war, when dozens and hundreds of rockets were being fired at Israeli territory, many at the area of the airport. There is no doubt that these were exceptional circumstances, Just as we never expected to fly to Kosovo during one cannot expect a foreign airline to fly, certainly not on schedule, to Israel in wartime. This was not an attempt to circumvent the law, but were exceptional, unpleasant circumstances, in which the foreign airline made every effort to provide the best possible service.”