Hi All,
I am following up with claim I started in the 2019 thread. I had a flight from LHR to PIT (transatlantic) cancelled 2 days in mid-November before it was scheduled because of the infamous Trent 1000 engine issues. BA denied my EC261 claim, so I submitted my claim to the CEDR to fight BA's dismissal of my claim. BA finally posted their defense to my claim this week, and I am preparing to retort. I will paste my retort below for comments before submitting should anyone have any advice. Hopefully it will also serve to help those would have similar issues, because I am not the first and undoubtedly not the last to have this problem with BA.
When I submitted my claim to the CEDR, I initially argued that BA did not take every reasonable measure available to them to avoid this cancellation. Their defense goes on about the problems with the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engine, and how they cannot be blamed for this failure and that it is an exceptional circumstance that should elevate them from having to pay compensation according to EC261. They point to the numerous Airworthiness Directives (AD) released since April 2017, with the most recent being released in April 2019. They then state that three 787s were already grounded because of engine issues when the plane my flight was to use was grounded. Those planes were grounded on 26 June, 04 Sept, and 09 Sept. They also stated in their defense that it takes 21-days to organize a 'wet-lease', and curiously, that wet-leases are harder to obtain in the spring/summer, even though my flight was in November. (Shows just how often they are defending themselves here that they have an obvious template). I argue that with 3 planes on the ground since early Sept, they had over 60 days to arrange a wet-lease in case they lost another plane, to a LONG KNOWN malfunction, to avoid cancelling flights. They chose instead to risk that they won't need it, and their gamble failed. This makes it obvious that they did NOT take every reasonable measure available to them to avoid the cancellation, and therefore should be liable to compensate me as per EC261.
Thanks to everyone that posted to the 2019 tread that helped me originally, especially corperate-wage-slave.
Dear CEDR,
Although British Airways claims that they have taken all reasonable measures in their defence document, I disagree with this argument, and I will lay out my reason for disagreement below.
As I stated in my initial claim, the problems with the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines are well known and have been known over two year prior to scheduled flight on 19 Nov 2019, with the initial AD being released on 19 April 2017. Even with the consideration that following the initial AD release there was a “fundamental shift in Rolls-Royce’s understanding of the problem” over time, the most recent AD was released on 29 March 2019 and went into effect 12 April 2019, which was still over 7 months prior to the scheduled flight.
In their defence, they readily admit that they were already short on aircraft when plane G-ZBKD was grounded on 16 November 2019, which they appear to argue was the maintenance issue that caused the cancellation of my flight BA171 on 19 Nov 2019. The document they submitted says that three planes already grounded with G-ZBKD was grounded, G-ZBJE grounded on 26 June 2019 (compressor), G-ZBKN grounded 04 Sept 2019 (compressor) and G-ZBJF grounded on 09 Sept 2019 (turbine). This indicates that for over 60 prior to the grounding of G-ZBKD British Airways knew that they were one maintenance inspection failure away from not having enough aircraft to meet their schedule requirements. British Airways states that it takes approximately 21 days to arrange a wet lease.
According to their defence, the grounding of the third aircraft on 09 Sept 2019 placed them in a position where one more failure caused by a well-known manufacture defect would force them to cancel flights. Beginning the process of arranging a wet-lease agreement at this time should not be considered an unreasonable measure. Had they begun the wet leasing process after grounding the third aircraft, they would have had the agreement in place on 16 Nov 2019 when G-ZBKD was grounded. Curiously, their defence states that it is more difficult to wet-lease aircraft in the spring/summer season, while the flight at the centre of this disagreement happened in the winter. This further indicates that arranging a wet-lease agreement from 09 Sept 2019 would be a reasonable measure British Airways could have taken to mitigate risk. That British Airways chose not to mitigate flight cancellation risks posed by a long-known manufacture’s defect was a gamble that they obviously chose to make. It is not, however, a gamble I chose to make, but rather one that was made for me.
As one of the world’s largest airlines, with significant resources at its disposal, British Airways could have done more to avoid the cancellation of flight BA 171 on 19 Nov 2019. I hereby restate my initial claim that British Airways did not take every reasonable measure available to avoid the cancellation, and as a passenger scheduled to take that flight, I ask that the adjudicator will uphold my claim and ensure that I am fairly and legally compensated for British Airways’ failure to meet the standards set in EC 261.
Kind Regards,
kellyseamus