Originally Posted by
corporate-wage-slave
Welcome to Flyertalk and welcome to the BA forum.
What matters here is not the delay in departure, but the delay in getting to your destination and the doors opening such that passengers can leave the aircraft. And the delay indeed needs to be more than 180 minutes to get part compensation in this scenario, or 240 minutes for full compensation. What BA (and other airlines) can do is come up with the concept of "countable" minutes. So if - for example - ATC had blocked departure for 20 minutes, that's non-countable, BA isn't usually responsible for that delay. So that's how BA can somehow get 5 hour delays down to under 3 hours, but as you can see what matters are the details, which we don't really have here.
Now I'm assuming that the flight crew gave you a briefing as to the reason for the delay, what did they say?
BA's as a standard do tend to say they may withdraw alternative offers if you go to CEDR. I don't think it has actually happened, but if the case is not eligible for EC261 then that's their prerogative, but terrible customer relations. But they can't withdraw EC261 remedies, that's just a matter of law. So by all means give some more details and we can give better advice.
The countable minutes thing is interesting.
My delay was 3 pronged;
1 hour delay to departure due to crew being late (within airlines control)
A further 1hr 20min delay as we then missed our ATC slot and had to get another one (as a result of the crew being late). Is that countable?
Finally arrived 7 hours late as a result of being diverted to another airport due to STORM HENK. Clearly not within the airlines control, but had we taken off on time and landed on time, we'd have been nowhere near the storm. I have evidence that flights were landing regularly on time at the scheduled arrival time of my flight.
What do I do here? Do I go after a 2hr+ claim as that's the original delay to departure that was arguably within the airlines control? Or do I go after 4hr+ on the basis that we wouldn't be in this mess if the crew hadn't been late?
Ta
A