Hi

Was due to fly from FNC to LGW on 20/01 on BA 2719. As anyone who has ever flown into Madeira will know, the airport is very susceptible to high winds, and from the early morning flights were unable to land and started diverting to other airports.

Our flight was not until 5pm in the afternoon, and the weather outlook was that the wind speed would decrease and planes would be able to land from lunchtime onwards, and this is indeed what happened. However at around midday I went into the BA app to discover that our flight had been cancelled (even before the outbound flight from LGW was due to depart).

Cue panic as both my partner and I needed to be back at work on the Tuesday morning, so we rushed to the airport to see what other options there were- eventually we found a Ryanair flight to Paris, stayed at a hotel at CDG and then had an early morning EasyJet to LGW the next day (BA’s alternative flights would have required us to stay on Madeira until Tuesday evening, fly to Lisbon and then onto LGW on the Wednesday morning).

I understand that flights cancelled due to weather are not generally eligible for compensation from the airline. However every other airline that day operated a normal schedule from lunchtime onwards, so the weather was obviously not impacting them.. For example Jet2 had a bank of flights departing in the afternoon, and delayed their outbound departures from the UK so their planes could land and then fly back pretty much on schedule.

My question therefore is can BA refuse compensation by claiming it is a weather- related event? Added complication is that booking was part of a package made through Expedia, and they have told us that we cannot claim compensation as BA have told them it was caused by the weather.

Thanks in advance for people’s thoughts.