Dave Noble

It states that under cancellation in the regulation

Your flight was not cancelled ; you had a delay causing a misconnection

For a delay situation, you need > 3 hours delay to get anything

20 minutes < 3 hours

strichener

I am not sure that it is really as clear cut as this. The regulations state that denied boarding is defined as:

"denied boarding" means a refusal to carry passengers on a flight, although they have presented themselves for boarding under the conditions laid down in Article 3(2), except where there are reasonable grounds to deny them boarding, such as reasons of health, safety or security, or inadequate travel documentation;



Article 3 (2) then states



2. Paragraph 1 shall apply on the condition that passengers:

(a) have a confirmed reservation on the flight concerned and, except in the case of cancellation referred to in Article 5, present themselves for check-in,

- as stipulated and at the time indicated in advance and in writing (including by electronic means) by the air carrier, the tour operator or an authorised travel agent,

or, if no time is indicated,

- not later than 45 minutes before the published departure time; or

(b) have been transferred by an air carrier or tour operator from the flight for which they held a reservation to another flight, irrespective of the reason.



In my case, I had checked in at EDI for the JFK flight, landed at Terminal 5 before the gate closed for the JFK flight and was met by a BA rep that told us that they were not holding he flight for us (about 30 passengers).

I would therefore conclude that we were denied boarding under the definition of both (a) and (b) above.

Tobias-UK

You were not denied boarding, you misconnected due to the late arrival of your feeder flight. You arrived too late to make your onward connection.

caz312

what time was the gate due to close and what time did you arrive? (I would have thought if you would have been able to get to the gate before the time it was due to close there would have been no reference to "holding the flight for you"

strichener

So a BA rep meeting you off the plane telling you that they are not allowing you onto the JFK flight is not denied boarding?

hugolover

Excellent explanation NickB it makes sense. What do you think regarding my point as to weather delays leading to further delays due to capacity problems? I.e. a weather delay leading to many many more hours because flights are full (or rebooking is not permitted due to lack of priority/fare class) and no re-route on OAL. I understand the courts take a sympathetic view to passengers who make the point that an airline should be doing more in its hub. Is it just that the weather delay means no compensation for inconvenience at all? Without getting into the nitty gritty of whether aircraft types can be moved around to facilitate more capacity, I believe you don't need to prove such things as a passenger.

Often1

Correct. There is no requirement anywhere that a carrier "hold" a flight for otherwise misconnecting pax. Certainly not in EC 261/2004. Accordingly, a carrier's representative telling that the carrier will not do that which it is not required to do is simply the communication of a fact.

I rather think that it is good customer service. As a general matter, my advice on possible misconnects is to always make a go for it unless you know that it is futile. Boarding does not always go smoothly and it only takes one noshow pax with a bag in the hold for an aircraft to take a significant delay while the bag is off-loaded. But, if you are affirmatively told that it is too late, you can afford to relax, take a deep breath and deal with the rebooking.

Here, the passenger failed to board by the scheduled time. He was not denied boarding in any reasonable sense.

He then accepted a reroute which got him to his final destination 20 minutes late. That is not compensable under EC 261/2004. The SAN-LAX downgrade issue is a red herring. EC 261/2004 applies to the operating carrier only. A number of carriers serve that route, but none are BA or any other community carrier. Neither SAN nor LAX are in the community. Hence, no compensation as EC 261/2004 does not apply at all. For completeness sake, OP was not downgraded, he chose to accept a reroute which included a segment in a one-class aircraft (a smart decision incidentally as that route may include as little as 20 minutes actually in the air).

strichener

Thanks for the explanation. On the SAN-LAX leg of the journey, BA is still the Operating Air Carrier and the passenger's depature point was the EU, EC 261/2004 applies.

corporate-wage-slave

Operating means "metal" for all intents and purposes, see 2(a). I don't believe BA operates any aircraft domestically within the USA. I suspect it was either AA or US were the operating carriers. You can still claim for that tiny downgrade component, otherwise you are out of luck under the Regulations. Your best route is a customer service remedy - bad experience, please give me some Avios, sort of thing.

corporate-wage-slave

This is probably a nuance in the general scheme of things. However! I agree with the second paragraph, but disagree with the second since the evidence for the TUI case (and I think the other airlines too) was precisely that they had cancelled a flight and then used the term "delay" to explain why it should not pay. As indicated by your second paragraph the judges said it was on equal consequence to the passengers. However you look at it, before October 2012 airlines did this sleight of hand, and afterwards they stopped. I don't think that's a total coincidence!

Often1

With all due respect, please provide further information. BA does not operate any flights between SAN and LAX and, in fact, US laws following on cabotage principles would prohibit BA from selling seats on such a flight if it did.

The only carriers offering non-stop commercial service between those two stations are AA, UA and DL. None are community carriers and as previously noted, neither Los Angeles nor San Diego are within the EU.

strichener

The cause of the re-routing was the delay in the UK.

The CAA interpret it as:

Dave Noble

Looking at the AA/US services for the 109 miles between SAN and LAX , they only operate with 1 class of service. It is hard to argue that you were downgraded on a 1 class service

From what I see, you missed a connection and were rebooked to your destination such that you arrived within 20 minutes of originally scheduled arrival time in business class across the atlantic and in the highest class of service offered on the SAN-LAX service

Not only is SAN-LAX not operated by a community carrier , nor is a route which is covered by the regulation but you were in the highest cabin on the aeroplane

I cannot see what compensation you would be due; with the rebooking that BA did , I cannot see that there should be any sort of customer service compensation

NickB

There are two distinct requirements that have to be satisfied by the airline to avoid compensation:
1) it must show that the cancellation/delay is due to an extraordinary circumstance AND
2) the delay/cancellation could not have been avoided even if it all reasonable measures had been taken.

So, just because there is originally a weather problem, which could conceivably constitute an extraordinary circumstance and therefore satisfy 1), it does not necessarily follow that the airline escapes liability automatically. It could still be liable if there were measures it could have taken to avoid the delay/cancellation. The carrier is expected to put the resources and financial means at its disposal to avoid the delay/cancellation unless it would lead to "intolerable sacrifices" in the light of the capacities of the undertaking, to put it in the language in the Wallentin-Hermann case.

The issue was discussed in the Eglitis case, regarding an initial delay due to atc faillure followed by a cancellation due to the crew going out of hours. The Court took the view that, while the ATC failure would clearly be an extraordinary circumstance, there would still be an expectation on the carrier to design its flight plan so as to provide a reasonable degree of slack to deal with potential delays that could occur for one reason or another.

So, in short, the Court does look into how the airline handles the incident as well as looking at the nature of the incident itself to determine whether there should be compensation or not. That said, the discussion in Eglitis concerns whether to cancel or not, not how to handle the reroute after cancellation/delay, which is the issue you are raising but the way in which the Court approaches the issue in Eglitis would lead me to think that they would probably adopt a similar approach to the handling of the rerouting, viz. would be likely to award compensation if the airline has not done what it could reasonably do to minimise the delay.

NickB

I take it you mean first?This may have been the case in TUI but I do not think that there is evidence that this was a widespread practice. In any event, if it were, all you would have established would be at most mere correlation rather than causation.

If the Court had thought that there was an issue with potential abuse, it would have said so and justified its finding on that basis. They did not and provided an, imo, better justification for their conclusion. It seems to me that the rationale for the decision is pretty clear. No need to look for speculative and weaker reasons elsewhere. I think it is plain that the Court was not motivated in reaching its conclusion by a danger of abuse. If they were, they would have phrased their judgment differently.