Originally Posted by
corporate-wage-slave
Welcome to Flyertalk and welcome to the BA forum. One aspect of BA's approach to this may be news to you, namely when a flight is cancelled on your booking it means "cancelled for you". So yes the connection wasn't viable, and therefore BA automatically rebooked you. Unfortunately this uses the same internal processing as a full cancellation, but it's just a means to an end. You asked about compensation, that's more covered by the EC261 thread, but the key issue is why was BA294 delayed. This would have been explained in the captain's briefing just after or before doors closed. What did s/he say? I suspect it was a slot delay coming out of the LHR-ORD service previously, since it was well over 2 hours late there. If so, the compensation is unlikely to be payable, but we would need the full flight timings to see whether over an hour of that was ATC related. I suspect it was, but the captain's briefing is better than my suspicion.
Thank you very much for the welcome and the detailed explanation, CWS. Indeed, I did not know that the message meant 'cancelled for me'. The staff at STL and ORD were unfamiliar with the terminology or process either, as they seemed equally puzzled. I have learnt something new!Regarding the BA294 delay, the captain mentioned it was caused by a delay of the inbound aircraft (BA295) due to de-icing procedures at LHR. I assumed that this would fall under weather-related reasons, but from what I am reading, that is not necessarily the case. When would such a delay be considered under airline control?
Thank you again.
giacomino