Hi guys,

I have posted this in the 2023 thread but thought to revisit this if possible.

I flew LGW-DOH-PVG in one booking. Both legs were marketed by QR, while LGW-DOH was operated by BA.

The BA LGW-DOH flight (BA2033, 30 Oct 2023) had a technical issue (per the pilot announcement), which resulted in them missing the original take-off slot. While they pushed back 12 minutes after the STD, they did so without having a slot (the pilot disclosed this in their announcement). The aircraft parked on the runway for another 50mins or so, and arrived DOH 63 minutes late, which resulted in my misconnect and a 5 hour delay in arriving PVG.

Took this up with BA, and their response was – they could only account for the 12 minute delay as their fault (essentially the 12 minutes delay till push-back), while blaming the rest of the delays to “ATC issues”. Upon some reading, I see that it seems to be a strategy adopted by airlines to minimise EC261 compensations (see link below). Pilots have been asked to push back early and hold on remote stand while waiting for slots, possibly because it is easier to attribute run-way delay on ATC.

Before I take this to CEDR, wonder if anyone has come across this and can share any reasonable ways to deal with this?

link to pilot forum talking about this:
https://www.pprune.org/airlines-airp...me-got-do.html