Thanks for the welcome.
The CAA has the following statement on its website:
"Heathrow required airlines to cancel a proportion of their flights based on forecast bad weather.
The reduction in capacity was to ensure flights could continue to operate safely and airlines could give advance notice to their passengers. The flights shown below were cancelled based on the expected weather conditions and in our view would be considered to be an extraordinary circumstance and not subject to compensation.
The list does not include flights cancelled on the day."
I assume, following this, BA then chose which flights they would cancel, presumably based upon there staffing levels and locations of aircraft.
The CAA site lists all the cancelled flights, which are clearly then covered by the extraordinary circumstances clause.
British Airways flight BA1395 was not one of the cancelled flights.
So at some point British Airways must have decided that this flight could operate and they had the aircraft and crew available to support the schedule.
Then some time later, something went wrong and meant they could no longer meet the schedule!!
It is my understanding that in this case I would be covered by the compensation scheme.
Additionally the problems on the Monday were a "knock on" effect from the 9/10th December weather and as such our flight was delayed due to an indirect cause and again if this is the case we should also be entitled to the compensation?
The weather in Manchester on the Monday was fine and when we arrived in Heathrow, eventually, the weather and airport conditions were also fine, with no evidence of any snow (I even have several photos out of the plane window on approach to Heathrow that clearly shows no snow anywhere). Our scheduled flight to MRS also left LHR on time (albeit without us on-board) which is again testament to the fact that the weather at LHR was fine!