yocko

it was the weirdest night. lhr sao paolo. in business.

first they spotted a dent in the wing... five engineers poked at it for about an hour, then they thought it was fine. Then we were ready for take off but while taxiing the fire alarm went off from the smoke detectors in all nine toilets (it sounded interesting, trust me. Back to the gate... new motherboard, but it took two hours to find engineers to fix it... by that time the pilots had gone over the hour and the flight was postponed till four the next afternoon (original departure time was 21.45. we were kept another two hours on the plane because heathrow had closed down, the trains etc they said... and got a meal... and after this idiocy they all shipped us off to the sofitel.

I had to reschedule the flight the next day to buenos aires, becuase i had missed my original connection to Uruguay and had to buy a new ticket EZE-MVD.

Should I claim? Do I stand a chance? I just jumped ship from KLM, because the product on BA is so much nicer in C... but this was a serious bummer..

Himeno

I'm still waiting to hear back about the claim I sent in November. I poked them on twitter 2.5 weeks ago, only reply was "the team is investigating".

denkigroove

I had a flight at the 23rd November LHR-LAS which was 22 hours delayed because of a damage in the freight room by third person/company. BA declined to pay the 600 Euro because it was not their fault and so its an extraordinary circumstance. Because LHR is the main hub of BA: are there no other available aircraft for such a case (mechanical problems)?

corporate-wage-slave

Sounds like you have a case, but if you read the posts above I think we can predict BA will at least initially deny the claim, and it will take quite some effort to convince them to pay up. Some aspects of your situation are verging into "extraordinary", but being BA's base, and chosing to have an older fleet with few spares, this is BA's operational model. They don't have to run it that way, if they do then that's a reasonable way to save money, but the consequence is that once in a while they have to cough up EU261 compensation.

Time to send a letter to them, reminding them that you are waiting for a reply, and that if you don't get a substantive reply in the next 10 days "I will assume that you do not intend to reply and I shall take the matter further".

Tricky! An event which is caused outside BA's control is indeed reasons for denying the claim, however the general proviso around this is that BA is expected to take all reasonable measures to avoid the delay (and I would add, minimise the delay, but that's my personal spin). As it was LHR's home base you seem to have a point, but it may be that BA has a slightly stronger case here than some of the other recent postings. A lot will depend on how tenacious you want to be in terms of pursuing the matter.

YorkshireJon

Hi all,

Do I have a case?
I was travelling on Sundays 1344 to LBA which was cancelled within an hour of departure, due to First Officer been sick.
I was rerouted to MAN on 1376 and got the first available train and taxi to LBA arriving at 00.00 which is on my taxi ticket, which is 3h45mins later than the scheduled arrival at my final destination.

Any advice and thoughts greatly appreciated

Jon

stifle

Yes I think you have a decent case, as it is a reasonable precaution for BA to have a spare member of crew on call at its home base for situations like that. Sounds like €250 compensation due plus the cost of the taxi and train.

corporate-wage-slave

Interesting. My response is that it is unlikely you will get far, since you presumably got to Manchester about an hour after then LBA flight was due in. There is a definite debate out there that it should be to the booked airport (and the Regulations support that intepretation); but I can't see BA paying up and they will also state that a First Office being ill at the last moment was extraordindary. Clearly at their home base that will be difficult to sustain, but taking all the factors together I really doubt BA will pay up.

Frankly you should have taken a taxi the whole way, billed that to BA and left it at that. It was late on a Sunday and presumably you needed to collect your car.

YorkshireJon

Thank you

Two different views, whilst I agree that its reasonable that BA should have spare crew at their base to cover something like this. I also think they will say it was extraordinary circumstances. Oh what to do!

Jon

corporate-wage-slave

Well it won't harm to submit a claim, that won't take long to do, the bigger question is whether you're prepared to push for payment, which I suspect would involve greater effort. The other approach you could try is to throw in your cards early, send a note to CS saying you have a borderline EU261 case but you will agree not pursue it if some Avios are provided instead. I doubt that would work, due to the legal niceties involved, but it would be another way to handle.

honesthomeowner

So was impacted by the foggy weather in December and flight was cancelled, was rebooked on a flight the following day and given a letter from BA around what the would pay for.

Decided to take taxi home rather than try and find a hotel, and then taxi back the next day.

Naturally weather encompasses extraordinary circumstances, fair enough. However, I don't believe extraordinary circumstances negates their duty of care.


BA have capped taxi cost to £50, but on reading regulation 261/2004 article 9 right to care there is no capping for taxi costs. Worth battling with them over this point?

corporate-wage-slave

This is slightly beyond the scope of EU261 but just ring them up, explain that you saved BA the cost of a hotel and ask for a full reimbursement of the taxi fares.

stifle

Officially BA doesn't have to pay for you to get home, but we had someone who posted last year who was given a refund of their taxi home in these circumstances but only after phoning up and explaining the situation fully.

Centipede100

I think honesthomeowner has a very reasonable and valid case for reimbursement of their taxi fare under the Reg. They mitigated the airline's loss by spending the night at home instead of an airport hotel and the Reg doesn't limit the cost of travel to/from an airport hotel only so the taxi fare is a reasonable and valid claim to make.

From Art 9:

(c) transport between the airport and place of accommodation (hotel or other).

corporate-wage-slave

And a very belated welcome to Flyertalk honesthomeowner, welcome to the BA board in particular. Please stick around and continue to participate, hopefully on issues not related to irrops!

greenman62113

Below is the response from BA received today. Would this be a standard first response in the hope I accept it and go away. Any thoughts appreciated.

Thank you for your email dated 11 December 2013. I would like to apologise for the delay in my response. I am sorry your flight to Prague was cancelled. It must have been very frustrating for you and your family, as your travel plans were disrupted severely. Please accept my sincere apologies for the stress and inconvenience caused.


Sometimes circumstances mean that we have no choice but to cancel a flight. So that we can protect your safety and meet legal requirements, our crew can only fly a certain number of hours. As there was a delay, the crew on your aircraft didn’t have enough time left to complete the journey within their scheduled hours. This meant we had to cancel the flight because another crew wasn’t available to operate it.


While I appreciate your reasons for asking, I'm afraid we cannot offer any compensation to you.

I know that things didn’t go as expected for you, but I do hope this reassures you that we do everything possible to prevent flight cancellations. Thank you again for contacting us and I hope that all of you will continue to fly with British Airways in the future.




Would like to post a big thanks to stifle, corporate-wage-slave, often1 and one or two others for advice regarding above situation. My first email to BA was responded to in customer service fashion but following further advice from them regarding EU261 have now successfully claimed for delay. Many thanks again.