I've been fortunate enough that I've never had to endure a lengthy delay (must just be luck) until last week.
Last week I booked a last minute trip to La Clusaz flying out to GVA on BA from LHR but no availability back on BA on the Sunday so ended up booking EZY to SEN
They fly twice a day on this route, morning and afternoon.
The morning flight was diverted to LGW due to fog and this had a subsequent knock on effect and delayed our afternoon flight by a couple of hours.
It was still foggy at SEN when we tried to land and we ended up doing a "go round" (first one I've ever had)
We circled for about 30 minutes before the captain announced we would be diverting to Luton where we landed at 20:15, baggage came out at 21:15 and then coached were laid on for transport back to SEN. I was fortunate to get a lift from Luton, but others didn't get back to SEN till gone midnight, a 7 hour delay on our original arrival time.
I spoke to EZY and stated that I was going to claim under EU261 for the delay and got the following reply.
Dear Mark,
Thank you for your email.
I am sorry to hear that your flight from Geneva to London Southend on the 4th January 2015 was diverted. I have checked the report on your flight prepared by our Legal Disruption Team. Your flight was diverted to London Luton due to low visibility in London Southend. I note that coach transport was provided from Luton to Southend. This is classed as an extraordinary reason for diversion under European Law. I can't offer you compensation for your flight because the reason it was diverted is extraordinary. We can only offer compensation for flights that are diverted when the reason it was diverted is non-extraordinary. This is not easyJet policy but a requirement of European Law.
If you need more information on extraordinary reasons please contact the Civil Aviation Authority.
I would like to reassure you that we make decisions with our passengers in mind and when a flight is diverted this is as a last resort, as we appreciate it's inconvenient for our passengers.
I hope this experience doesn't deter you from choosing to fly with us again in future.
I've found the document he refers too.
http://ec.europa.eu/transport/themes...ances-list.pdf
Never heard of this before? Do I have a case?
I believe that as they already knew about the fog issue they should have diverted to another airport in the first place thus reducing the delay and giving people the chance to arrange collection etc before even leaving GVA
On the flip side, other planes landed immediately before and after ours.