As most of you fellow students must have already realised, academic theory differs greatly from real-life practice. I am studying Law and after having read many cases which I had believed were illustrations of the practical application of the law, I felt competent to apply my legal knowledge and skills to my everyday life. However, I soon came to realise that the beautiful moral doctrines and legal principles are not practically applicable in the same way as they are in exams.

I was of course aware that access to judicial remedies is highly expensive, and that in that sense legal theory was distorted. But I came to realise other practical and pragmatic obstacles to justice and legal principles in general. An incident made me appreciate this gap between theory and practice to its full extent.

After having spent the Christmas holidays in New York, I had been scheduled to return to London on a Friday morning, departing from New York on the Thursday night with Zoom Airlines. Upon I arriving at the airport after queuing up for check-in, I was informed that there was some problem with the aircraft; the smaller plane provided would only be able to take some of the passengers on a ‘first come, first served’ basis. I did not make it on the first plane.

I was stuck in New York and no matter how well I knew my legal rights I had no remedy. The European Union had recently passed a directive providing extra protection for all air travellers to and from the EU – Directive 261/2004. But no matter how well I knew its provisions the Directive could not get me home.

My rights provided me with the option of being rerouted at the earliest opportunity to my final destination. This would have been ideal, but my carrier refused to do so.

In theory, as we have learned, this was a breach of an implied term of my contract with the airline, but in practice I could do nothing. Theory was useless in the circumstances.

Theoretically once again I could buy the ticket to London from another company and then claim my costs from Zoom or sue them for damages (the price of the new ticket).

This sounds perfect in theory, but practice is not so straightforward:

A last minute ticket would have costed around £500, which raises three problems:

• someone might not have £500 on the spot,
• it is not worth the costs to go to court for £500,
• and even if you brought a group claim for a bigger sum, worth of going to court for, the carrier could go bankrupt, and not pay anything; not even the costs of the trial.

So I was stuck in New York reading all my rights over and over again with great uncertainty as nobody could assure me if my flight was ever to depart. I eventually made it to London after a 25-hour delay and on a Saturday when all consumer protection departments were shut so I could not make any complaints, or seek any remedies until the Monday – not to mention leaving behind all the other obligations I had for Friday.

Among my rights I was also entitled to monetary compensation, a hotel for the night and two free phone calls.

I aim not to bring my story to the forefront with this article, I just seek to let students realise how much practice differs from theory. We come to University hoping that when we leave we will have gained the skills to be taken seriously in the real world. Unfortunately the reality is often not so. Practice is a long way ahead of theory – more pragmatic and less idealistic.

With this article I seek partly to assist students realise the gap between education and a career and work their way through it, partly seek to let students know of their rights when they travel by air and partly to warn students not to fly with Zoom Airlines. Justice is not just blind as it is often portrayed. It is also handicapped and usually offers no remedy to small claims.

Read the reply from Zoom Airlines