Land-of-Miles

Indeed one of BA's more innovative defence strategies involves claiming the Small Claims court has no jurisdiction and that only the CAA can rule, despite the CAA having no process to do so.

BA's approach to EU261 is shameful and what you would expect of Ryanair not a full service airline.

In my view in these situations it is a waste of time and ink writing to BA and expecting a meaningful response. Simply file a claim at Moneyclaim and get more control of the situation.

BerksFlyer

Agreed, however I do have an ounce of sympathy for the airlines here. The EU261 penalties are too high in some cases and £200 compensation for a delay on a short haul flight that only cost £50 seems wrong to me. This might explain why the airlines are kicking back at it.

I had a very long delay in exactly that scenario once. I had a £44.50 flight (half a £99 return) delayed by over 7 hours and I got £200 in compensation. The silly thing is that I didn't write to BA seeking EU261 compensation, I just wanted something. The £44.50 would have sufficed. Instead BA wrote back saying they weren't responsible and after lots of to and fro I got £200 (€250).

Lesson for BA - instead of refusing all claims, often in a forthright manner that gets people's backs up, just offer some compensation when you are clearly responsible. It might actually save you in the long run!

Dave Noble

There is not poimt referring it to the CAA, it is useless in regards to EC261

Send the letter stating that the airline has 7 days to pay or that you will take action ; if in 2 weeks no money is forthcoming, then go to money claim online and start proceedings

Dave Noble

Without EC261, you would have likely have received zero since there would otherwise be no compensation due.

heilancoo

Hi guys.

Looking for some feedback to see where we stand with our claim and hoping somebody can give us some advice.

We (4 adults) were scheduled to fly LGW-MCO on BA2037 which was due to depart at 11.50am on 29/08/14 and arrive at 4.05pm local time. This flight was cancelled the day before departure due to BA logistical reasons (we were told this aircraft was sent to Las Vegas to deal with a delay there). As a result, we were re-booked for the later BA2039 service which should have departed at 2.20pm and arrived in Orlando at 6.35pm.

Due to technical issues, BA2039 was delayed until 5.10pm and did not arrive until 9.22pm - 5 hours and 20 minutes after we were originally scheduled to arrive. Ground staff at Gatwick and the cabin crew onboard both claimed that the delay was due to "an engine fault" which was found during maintenance checks.


I have requested compensation from BA and have received a reply today which states;

"... In accordance with Regulation 261/2004, compensation is payable in some instances of cancellation. However, compensation is not payable if the cancellation is due to ‘extraordinary circumstances’.
There are examples of what can constitute “extraordinary circumstances” set out in the Regulation 261/2004, including technical issues. In the regulation technical issues are referred to as “unexpected flight safety shortcomings”. The reason for the cancellation of your flight was a technical issue of this nature, and therefore, compensation would not be payable in accordance with the regulation.
The issue of what constitutes a technical fault amounting to an ‘extraordinary circumstance’ was recently considered by the Court of Appeal in the case of Huzar v Jet2.com. However, this is being appealed to the Supreme Court. In the circumstances, we are postponing consideration of your claim for compensation until the Supreme Court has issued its decision.
Once the decision is issued, please contact us with your case reference so that the circumstances of your cancelled flight can be reviewed in light of the Supreme Court decision....."


Does anybody have any advice on what our next step should be? I obviously do not want to wait an indefinite length of time until the supreme court issue a decision on this matter. I am also frustrated with this response as half of this delay was caused by re-routing our original plane purely for BA logistical concerns - nothing to do with safety shortcomings.

Dave Noble

You do not need to wait for anything regardless of what BA is trying to imply

Just write back giving BA 7 days to pay up or that you will take action

UKtravelbear

One of the reasons the regulation was created in the first place was because airlines weren't voluntarily compensating and caring for their passengers when things went wrong.

If the airlines believe the regulation is too onerous / costly they only have themselves to blame for not doing the right thing in the first place.

In the proposed revisions changes have been put forward that will extend the time lengths for when when delay compensation comes into effect (5 hours for a short haul and I think 10 for a 3,500km flight) which will reduce their financial exposure. But no doubt they will start to try and wriggle out of those (longer) limits too.

corporate-wage-slave

Welcome to Flyertalk heilancoo, welcome to the BA forum in particular. Thanks for your question, it's great to see you here. I hope you will also be able to participate actively in this forum, which is an excellent knowledge base. Welcome on board.

If you have a look at the other claims in the past few weeks, you will see that the reply you received is very similar other claims. If you want to speed matters up you will need to follow the other contributors down the MoneyClaim Online (MCOL) route after giving them 7 days notice before action. See post number 832 for a text book example.

serfty

Going by previous anecdotes, that letter will be a waste of your time.

Post #832 could be described as a succinct executive summary of an example of one of the more successful methods to proceed with. Here is a direct link post #832: The BA Compensation Thread: Your guide to Regulation 261/2004 (#832)

Read that then also read the first few posts of this very thread.

Here is a link: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...61-2004-a.html

NickB

I do not see any problem with that and I can't see the CJEU having any problems with it either. The relevant delay is 3 hrs. Are you really suggesting that airlines are going to add another hour or two notional flying time to be on the right side of Reg 261/2004? I do not think that this is likely. If you are saying that airline may increase padding to reduce the risk of misconnect, that is a possibility but I do not see it as a problem either: timetables should reflect realistic timings. If flights regularly misconnect, that suggests that timetables are excessively optimistic and more "padding" should be introduced to make the timings more realistic in practice, even if it means that it would not be unusual for an airline to arrive earlier than scheduled. I have yet to see people complaining about flights being too early.

Do not forget either that, while shorter padding times increase the likelihood of misconnects and paying compensation under Reg 261/2004, they also reduce the overall flight duration in timetables and therefore make the flights more attractive. So the airline will balance the marketing advantage of shorter connection/overall flying time with the disadvantage of the risk of misconnects, with all the consequences it entails including potential 261/204 liability.

Paralytic

Hi, here's an update from my claim.

Summary: EDI-LHR-SFO itinerary, one booking, one hour (but valid) connection in LHR. EDI-LHR flight landed at international gate, and we were bussed from the back of the plane, I was in row 2, so nearly last off, got to flight connections 30 minutes before LHR-SFO was due to depart. I had already been offloaded and was re-routed to SFO via YVR. I Arrived 4+ hours late than originally scheduled into SFO.

Longer version linked to here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/23479936-post1276.html

After a few to-and-fro exchanges with Customer Care, where they denied BA had any responsibility here, I put the claim in with Money Claim Online.

I got an acknowledgement back, and a couple of weeks later got letter from BA’s lawyers stating they were defending the claim (this arrived at my house a couple of Friday’s back). Then, the following Tuesday, I got an email from a “Senior Service Recovery Executive” stating my claim would now be paid. I gave my bank details and the funds hit my account a few days later.

Interestingly, the feedback on this thread was mixed as to whether this was a valid “delay” claim under EU261, since neither flight I eventually took was actually delayed and the regs. are written from a "flight was late" perspective, not a "passenger was late" perspective:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/23630638-post1384.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/23631072-post1392.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/23632518-post1403.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/23632534-post1405.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/23632641-post1408.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/23632672-post1409.html

I’m not picking on Dave Noble and mc1973 here, both whom gave valuable advice, but I think this highlights that things are never as clear cut as we might think.

corporate-wage-slave

I personally thought you would be paid. Thank you for telling us this too, it's a bit annoying that for all the advice that is dispensed with here, there is so little feedback on outcomes! It would be good if you could clarify the amount claimed for (and presumably paid). My only surprise is that they even briefly attempted to defend the matter. Plus I knew BA had paid up in similar circumstances.

But to be fair to those who gave their advice on the matter, the specific complication of IDB is there is a reference to the word "reasonably", which I think inspired some of the advice here, and that's a term very much open to interpretation. Delay, which is how I saw this, does not have this word, but the payment is the same amount. The awkward bridge between the two here is that your outbound flight was not delayed (nor the domestic really), so they had the reasonable right to IDB you (open to massive debate but let's leave that as a given for this argument). After all on paper it looks like you could have spent 20 minutes in World Duty Free. Which I think explains why they initially thought they could see you in court.

My view is that BA advertised a connection and then via activities purely under their own control they prevented you getting to the aircraft. Therefore under the overall customer protection ethos, I felt you had a good case.

But indeed your outcome does give some illustration of the complexities.

Paralytic

I claimed the 600 EUR, converted to GBP, plus the £35 MCOL fee. That was paid in full.

Yes, I could see why it could be argued, by the letter of the regulations, that the claim was not valid. Indeed, the settlement does not actually disprove that argument since the response I got basically said the settlement was being made because I'm a valued customer, not because they agreed with my case.

Yes, that was my laymans view on things too. I thought it was a valid claim, in the "spirit" of the regulations.

And I'd like to thank-you for your advice on this thread - if it were not for the information shared here, its doubtful as to whether I would have taken the time to make a claim.

FlyIgglesFly

Well, five months after the fact, I finally hear back on my claim for a delay/reroute compensation of 300 euros. I sent three complaints, no response, and finally was contacted by email over the weekend that my claim had been accepted, I was entitled to the 300 euros, and to send my UK bank account info.

I live in the US. I do not have a UK bank account. I assume I'll now have to wait another five months to for a response to learn of alternate options to receive payment.

EDI_Martin

Thanks for the update and well done for persisting with it in what IMO was a lost cause but as you say things aren't as clear cut as they seem.

Interesting enough that BA suggest they would defend the claim and then pay out, maybe suggesting they would defend is to try and force the claimant into a corner so they pull the claim.