Originally Posted by
FrancisA
I have just had a bizarre response to an EC261 claim. BA accept that the flight was delayed by over three hours, but as a certain single digit number of minutes was airborne delay "outside BA's control", this takes the delay below three hours and therefore no compensation.
I can't point to anything that says they are definitely right or definitely wrong on this. I'm assuming you were something like 185 minutes late in arriving and BA are claiming (e.g.) 10 minute was due to ATC. Now my take on this is that it broadly takes about 25 to 30 minutes to get airborne out of LHR, if LGW it's more complicated (time of day related). Let me give you an example from the flight I've just taken, LHR-EDI on BA1452. This left gate 3 at LHR at 16:26 (a minute late) and got to EDI gate 10 at 17:55, which is 5 minutes late. As is common at this time of day we were held at the queue point for 27R (the one by Holiday Inn Ariel) for quite a while and only got airborne at 17:01, so it took 35 minutes from pushback to take off. This is a little on the long side, 25 to 30 minutes is what I normally expect, but here's the point: today with strong winds and a congested Eurocontrol boxes day, they accommodated the delay pretty much within the generous time allowed under the schedule, 5 minutes late into EDI, 1 minute late out of the gate, 10 minutes late at 27R, 5 minutes at least recovered from the time padding.
So in your case, if you were airborne say 40 minutes after the eventual pushback, then BA perhaps have a case (and this is where capturing the Expertflyer data or asking here for it within 2 days is so helpful). That's a long delay and if BA are saying 10 minutes is due to ATC then they have the evidence for this. If on the other hand you were airborne at LHR 30 minutes after your delayed pushback then I would say that's not valid. As you can see, the details rather matter here.
If you feel strongly about this, you better forget CEDR and focus on MCOL, but I think you'll have to do a lot of research. And it would need MCOL/CEDR to change their view, in that some paralegal would have to construct a case rather than a Customer Relations representative.