NickB

To me, there are precisely reasons why this cannot be regarded as an extraordinary circumstance. If you are an airline, you will know that a delay of 30 mins on a route like this is clearly something which should be contemplated and that you should plan for in the connections that you offer to passengers.
Let us draw an analogy: if I were planning to arrive at LHR T5 2 minutes before conformance time and fail to make conformance because the tube has a five-minute delay, would you say that I am a victim of extraordinary circumstances which are entirely outside my control?

To me, the very idea of an "extraordinary circumstance" is incompatible with the notion of a predictable misconnect.

tsp

Thank you corporate-wage-slave! This is super-useful!

To answer your question: I arrived at the gate approx 10 minutes before scheduled departure (I ran there after security). There was nobody around: the flight had clearly already boarded. I found the nearest member of AA staff but it was clear there was no way of getting on the flight.

I don't recall being offered a rebooking via Charlotte. I was offered a rebooking via Dallas, to get me to New Orleans that evening. I accepted, but near to departure time that was delayed too, meaning I'd miss the connection in Dallas after all. So I was rebooked again, this time on the flight the next morning, which I took (these are the "some complications" I mentioned above but did not go into).

I have two questions.
1. If I can show [if they are unable to show] that due to circumstances under their control I had less than the MCT (1hr25), do you know if that is that sufficient for a case? If not, what determines whether they got me to O'Hare in sufficient time to get through immigration, security, etc?
2. Can you clarify for me what is generally accepted to be under airline control? Specifically, which of the following are usually considered under airline control?
i. the 8 minutes delay to depart the gate
ii. the 27 minutes between departure from gate and take-off
iii. the 38 minutes between landing and doors open

Thanks again! This has already been very useful indeed.

corporate-wage-slave

1) I don't think this goes anywhere. MCT does potentially have a relevance in another context (IDB) but just being below MCT does not to my mind trigger a successful claim, after all it's possible to make the flight below MCT, and to miss the flight with a connection above MCT AND it could be deemed to be the airline's fault.

2) What the Regulations state is that ATC related activity is potentially extraordinary. Having said that, NickB makes a good point above for arguing that we need to go beyond this, and indeed some recent court judgments in other areas have tended towards the passengers' perspective. Luckily I'm not a lawyer nor a judge. But leaving that to the side, BA actually controls relatively little of the timings immediately before take off, and immediately after landing: the captain acts substantially at the behest of ATC's instructions. Anyway, BA has pointed to the 8 minutes, they may separately point to the other 2 timings too, but haven't yet.

Bring this together, a lot depends on your motivation levels. If you pursue it BA may well roll over and pay up, or they may be OK to see this in court. How that will work out I really don't know, and I think one would have to be quite brave to announce the outcome at this point. Upthread there are quite a lot of open and shut cases, I fear your case does not belong to that category.

nufnuf77

I don't know the answer to your questions, but I am surprised by the abovementioned as the AA boarding passes always mention that gate close 10 minutes before departure! I would have thought at T-10 with a missing passenger they would still be at the gate.

lorcancoyle

I seem to recall CAA punctuality statistics having an assumed taxi time of 25 mins at LHR. So 27 mins shouldn't be extraordinary - will try to dig out link

Here we go - in the notes (but also a footnote comment that it doesn't differentiate by terminal)

https://www.caa.co.uk/Data-and-analysis/UK-aviation-market/Flight-reliability/Datasets/Punctuality-data/Punctuality-statistics-notes/

Christol

Good evening all,

I was telling a friend earlier today about issues I had flying out to the US on BA flights at the end of last week and he kindly directed me to this forum. It looks like I'm in the right place, but could I please pick your collective brains on my best course of action?

I bought return flights from London to Washington with British Airways, leaving on Thursday 7 April and returning over Monday night to arrive on Tuesday 12 April. My flight out was split into two: BA1520 departing LHR at 5.15pm (all times local) and arriving JFK at 8.10pm; and BA5244 departing JFK at 9.30pm and arriving at DCA 11.03pm. These were operated by American Airlines. My return flight left IAD at 6.30pm and arrived at LHR without issue at 6:45am the following day.

My problems arose on Thursday evening. Shortly after arriving at JFK I found out that my connecting flight to DC had been cancelled. I was told that there had been poor weather earlier in the day which had had a knock on effect. I was also told that the airport hotel was "probably full" as most other people scheduled to take the flight had found out several hours earlier than I had and taken the bookings. I was put on AA4234 at 11:50am from JFK to DCA the following morning and (by some very good fortune!) was able to stay at a friend's apartment in Manhattan.

I returned the following morning to find this new flight had also been cancelled, again because of the weather (although it was, incidentally, a lovely day in both DC and New York!). I was then put on AA101 at 2.55pm which, after a brief delay, arrived at DC at around 4.30pm - circa 17 hours later than scheduled.

I have several concerns and frustrations about this. First, that every AA representative I tried to speak to took great pains to tell me that it was not AA's fault - it was the weather so there was nothing they could do for me. This seemed bizarre. The poor weather had apparently been earlier on Thursday, not when either of my flights were scheduled - I struggle to understand how an airline's decision to run flights with such tight turnover times that an earlier delay leads to the cancellation of a later flight could amount to "extraordinary circumstances". Second, and less pressingly, a quick check of the weather records indicate that there was nothing particularly "extraordinary" about the weather on either of those days. Third, there was no attempt to make the 17 hour delay any easier - I was offered no food, drink or accommodation. Finally, this delay felt all the more egregious for the fact that I was only on a four day break - it effectively took a quarter of my holiday and made me change a number of my plans for the rest of my time.

Any advice would be gratefully received! Many thanks in advance,

Chris

lorcancoyle

I think you're out of luck on compensation christol - EU rules only apply to non-EU airlines when flying out of the EU (or EEA), whereas your issue was on a flight wholly outside the EU.

Can't comment on the care / hotel aspect

Welcome to FT - there'll be someone more certain of situation than me along shortly (if they haven't posted already!)

corporate-wage-slave

Welcome to Flyertalk Christol, welcome to the BA forum in particular. It's good to see new people here and I hope we will see you in other parts of this valuable resource.

Indeed this is outside the remit of EC261, this being the USA.

And your experiences are, I'm afraid to say, quite typical. If it's weather related all bets are off, and if the airline gets you vaguely to your original destination then that's really all they offer. Certainly not accommodation or compensation. They typically won't give out drinks vouchers either.

If something else happened that made it absolutely appalling then you could ask AA for some customer remediation, but generally there is no come back. Welcome to the USA.

UKtravelbear

It is standard practice in the USA that there is no 'duty of care' if a flight is delayed or cancelled due to weather only when there is a mechanical problem so you are on your own for those costs for hotels, food and transport (or try your travel insurance) and yes US airline staff can be over emphatic about it.

tsp

Thank you again corporate-wage-slave - and NickB too. I will have to consider my options. Maybe I should approach one of the no-win-no-fee agents who specialise in this area? Is there any particularly recommended one?

Gagravarr

I may be wrong, but I thought the no-win-no-fee places only took on the "easy" cases?

corporate-wage-slave

I'm not a lawyer and I am not in the game of being able to recommend NWNF agents, I personally wouldn't use one because the Regulation and the Small Claims process is supposed to not require legal representation. However Bott have a reputation for trying to push the boundaries of the Regulation, but I'm entirely neutral as to whether that it is a good idea to approach them or not.

Lerwick

Hello all,

as written in another thread here, BA cancelled our BA3 flight on Good Friday. I got to know about this by checking our seat reservation about a week prior to our flight. We were not informed about this. We were on an ex-DUB AA issued ticket. I called AA and they could not see the cancellation on their systems, on the AA website/in our reservation the BA3 flight still was shown as operating.

Only after pushing them, they asked the Oneworld desk and then acknowledged that BA3 was indeed cancelled. They rebooked us via Heathrow subsequently, leaving Dublin 2-3 hours later than planned, but arriving into JFK earlier then planned. The cancellation created a big mess with seat reservations and also the ticket itself, we had to spend a lot of time at check-in desks and I called AA 4 times trying to bring things back in order.

I have now asked BA for a EU 261/04 compensation of 300 Euros each (halved due to our arrival time). BA has rejected the claim, arguing that they informed AA about the cancellation 19 days before the flight and further saying that AA rebooked us the next day - which clearly was not the case. They argue that as they informed AA about the cancellation in good time, therefore we are not due any compensation.

I am now pondering whether a small claims court claim is the way to go. What do you think? I have done the small claims court route 3 times already and have always been successful instantly. But these were clear cut cases where the plane went tech.

corporate-wage-slave

The relevant clause is quite clear:

And the operating carrier is BA not AA. So BA's answer doesn't look correct, even though it may be a case of AA needing to up their game in these circumstances. However if you found out at a later date but your travel still falls within the time margins mentioned in the initial posts, you don't have a claim.

Innocent Abroad

Maybe I am missing something basic but does EC261 applies only to pax that are residents of the EU? I am in correspondence with BA concerning a delayed BA flight (LHR-SFO) and in the message I got from BA they indicated "Under Israeli law, the pertinent piece of legislation that would ordinarily apply to passenger complaints is the Israeli Aviation Services Law (Compensation and Assistance for Flight Cancellation or Change of Conditions), 2012".

This might be a good thing as the Israeli law is more enhanced (in the original sense...) than the European, but I am a little bit confused.