silverfc

I flew on 8 Nov LHR - JNB on BA 55 which was delayed. It landed 102 minutes late, meaning that I missed my connection to Cape Town. I was not accommodated on the next flight, but re-booked onto the subsequent one, and arrived into Cape Town at 14:50 not 11:35. More than 3 hours late.

BA are denying that EU261 applies based on the following:
The minimum connection time allowed for your flights was 90 minutes. I can see from your booking you had left yourselves 130 minutes to connect. Flight BA0055 was delayed on arrival by 102 minutes. I've checked our records and can see 28 minutes of your flight was payable due to reasons within our control. I can also see 64 minutes of this flight isn't payable due to a passenger becoming unwell, which is out of our control. The remaining 10 minutes was time lost during flight operations. As your delayed flight only has 28 payable minutes which we're liable for and this doesn't take you under the minimum connecting time, I'm afraid you're not entitled to EU compensation on this occasion.

I would deem EU261 to be payable based on 2 factors:
1. At no point was a passenger being unwell raised as being the cause of the delay - the aircraft returned to a different gate as some of the washrooms were inoperable and the Engineering Team needed to rectify this problem before the flight commenced. This was the announcement from the flight deck.
2. The delay resulted in me being automatically re-booked onto a later flight which landed more than 3 hours after the original arrival time - outside of my control - but within BA's control when there was a flight which I could have taken which would have arrived at my final destination within the 3 hour cut off.

I would not expect BA to bump passengers to accommodate me, but would expect the applicable compensation to be paid. BA's online statement says that compensations is payable If you're delayed at your final destination by more than 3 hours and that delay arises from causes within our control (rather than extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided by all reasonable measures);

The collective wisdom of the Flyertalk community would be appreciated on this one, as would any more information which is available as to the cause of the initial.