I am really sorry to hear of your inconvenience - I have been there, done that, many, many times before due to the weather conditions, and it can be quite troublesome. But I highly doubt that BA want to cancel flights - just think about how much they have had/will have to pay for people's hotel rooms and meals alone!

I believe it is indeed considered an extraordinary circumstance, and the presence of fog is beyond BA's control, as is the reduced air traffic flow that results from it.

Hotels, meals and a phone call (or is that two phone calls?) are provided for by the EU Regulation 261/2004. You will need to submit a written claim to BA to have those reimbursed.

Anything beyond that, I know I have harped on about this before, is something you need to claim from your travel insurance. It is extremely unlikely that a claim against BA for anything beyond the hotel/meals/phone calls will be successful as it was not BA's choice or negligence that the fog affected the airport and therefore their flights were affected. You will also see that it was not just BA flights that were cancelled from LHR today. This kind of situation is precisely what you should have the travel insurance for, although not all the travel insurances cover this situation.

As for not cancelling the flight until 30 minutes before, maybe they were trying to see if they could operate it, as the fog was improving at one point. I think it's one of those "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation for airlines where unfortunately they can't please everyone in every situation no matter what they do. If they cancelled it early, they would probably have received complaints that they have done so prematurely.


With the capacity LHR is at, I do not think there was much that could be done about it on this occasion, unlike the snow and the lack of snow clearing equipment. The only thing that may have helped would have been an extra runway that can be run independently.