C-294/10 · 2011 · UK 261 AND EC 261
Andrejs Eglītis and Edvards Ratnieks v Latvijas Republikas Ekonomikas ministrija
Reasonable measures under Art. 5(3) include planning ahead. The Court held on 12 May 2011 that a carrier must organise its resources with a certain reserve of time, so a flight can still be operated once an extraordinary circumstance ends; a carrier with no reserve at all has not taken all reasonable measures. No fixed minimum reserve applies to every airline in every situation.
REVIEWED AGAINST RULE SET V6 AND THE CITED PRIMARY SOURCES · UPDATED 7 AUGUST 2026
- COURT
- Court of Justice of the European Union (Third Chamber)
- CASE NUMBER
- C-294/10
- JUDGMENT
- 12 May 2011
- CITATION
- Case C-294/10, judgment of 12 May 2011
What the case was about
Swedish airspace around Malmö closed at 20.30 on 14 July 2006 after power failures took down radars and navigation systems.
An Air Baltic flight from Copenhagen to Riga due out at 20.35 kept its passengers on board until around 22.45, then was cancelled.
The passengers argued the real cause of the cancellation was the crew running out of permitted working hours once the closure ended.
What it changed
- It moved the reasonable measures test upstream, from the day of disruption into how the schedule was built.
- The assessment runs to the delay at the end of the flight in the new conditions, and takes in foreseeable secondary risks such as crew hours.
- The counterweight survives: the required reserve must not force intolerable sacrifices given the carrier's capacity, and Art. 6(1) thresholds play no part in the assessment.
SOURCES
- Case C-294/10 Eglītis and Ratnieks, judgment of 12 May 2011 · EUR-Lex · checked 7 August 2026
- Regulation (EC) No 261/2004, Art. 5(3) · EUR-Lex · checked 7 August 2026