KARFA

According to the diagrams in post 1 section 11.2 a delay under 4hrs for that length of flight would be EUR300 if compensation is payable based on the delay reason here.

baflyer123

Thank you for your help.

CHCflyer

Two year ago I was booked HAM-LHR-NCL which all fell into a heap due weather en route. BA finally paid hotel and rail costs.
Fast forward two years and totally unplanned I was in HAM with my Wife going to NCL booked in Club.
Weather caused the inbound flight operating our outbound flight to divert to BRU. OK, but at least there were two later BA flights I could take that could make NCL albeit later in the day.
Two gate agents were tasked with rebooking over 100 passengers (our flight ended up being delayed 5 hours). As these poor agents also had to manage the boarding of those two later BA flights to LHR I was finally rebooked some 7 hours after my original scheduled departure time. I was rebooked the following morning to NCL and I booked myself into a hotel in town. BA has paid the hotac costs pretty swiftly, I must say, but is saying the delay was due to weather.
The fact is that BA's under-resourced agents taking 7 hours to rebook caused my delay. There were two more flight possibilities but the queue was simply too long for me to get to the front. By the time I was served all options were closed.
Bremen call centre said there was nothing they could do as my booking was under airport control.
Surely this is a valid compensation claim?
Being reprotected last with a Euro800 one-way Club ticket and Emerald status is pretty poor.

golfmad

What's the current thinking on this situation please:

A bird strike on a flight inbound into LHR caused the delay of my outbound flight from LHR.

I know that ordinarily a bird strike on one's own sector is deemed to be out of the control of the airline but from reading a corresponding thread on the AA forum it sounds like this excuse is negated if it would be reasonable to expect the airline to have another aircraft available for use as a replacement. As the problem occurred for BA at their main hub I'm wondering whether people think BA should cough up under EC261. So far BA have politely said 'no'.

Thanks

rapidex

Tell BA bo44ocks,or a more polite version if you prefer.This is exactly why EU261 was introduced in the first place.BA have a choice,have a spare aircraft or pay up.They have made their choice.

Good luck with your claim.

corporate-wage-slave

That's pretty much correct. My reading of recent cases is that bird strike can sometimes be deemed extraordinary circumstances on the flight in question, but the way an airline recovers from extraordinary circumstances such as bird strike is very much open to challenge. I don't think bird strike inbound to LGW, LCY or LHR gives BA a free card to get out of their responsibilities for departing passengers, and a case could be made from other airports too (JFK?) in terms of effective management of the problem. Moreover if it is a 50/50 argument, then the over riding provision of EC261 is passenger protection.

corporate-wage-slave

In terms of EC261 I am not sure it is, the core facts would largely support BA since normally no airline willing entertains diverted aircraft if it can possibly avoid it. The Regulation doesn't specifically give timelines for airlines to fulfill the rebooking requirement. It may have been tedious but BA did what was required of them in the Regulation. On the other hand, the CRA (linked above) may give some scope perhaps (?) but even then I'm not certain. Taking 7 hours to rebook someone seems silly, rather than exercising care/skill.

Personally I would have handled this differently. It is certainly the case that immediately after an irrop that Contact Centre staff often find their hands tied since the booking is still controlled by the airport. But usually after an hour or so the flight is deemed "cancelled" and at that point the booking is released for rebooking, either at the airport or by the Contact Centre. Unfortunately it does tend to drag on a bit but after a while I would have gone back to the Contact Centre.

Even if that wasn't going to work, at the point at which the last viable option is about to vanish I would rebook myself via any sensible method, and send BA the bill, in view of some recent CAA interventions in this area. There would be a risk in doing this, BA may not make it easy to get reimbursement. Insurance may or may not help, but BA will readily provide the documentation needed for claims at least. The other option, if there are BA / codeshare options, is to rebook via the Contact Centre and sort it out after the event. Moreover after a cancelled flight or a 5 hour delay you're entitled to a refund on the ticket anyway, so it may be the new flight is a similar or lower fare.

golfmad

Thanks. I've responded to the very nice lady in the GGL customer relations team. I wonder whether she reads this thread? If so she will recognize much of the text in my response. I will report back...

armouredant

Is anyone able to tell me the reason for the delay of BA8004 on the 30/10/17? We were informed at the lounge that it was maintenance, which had the knock on effect of delaying the plane getting to the gate for 2h 40m. ExpertFlyer doesn't seem to record a delay code.

John Kline

Advise please;


Flight LHR to BWI was cancelled due to a technical fault
Re-booked onto a flight to Dulles
On arrival i was given no advice regarding getting to BWI from Dulles
Baggage was not on the flight, arrived 2 days later from 2 different airports
1 piece of luggage left on the step outside the house at 6am. House doesnt
have a garden so on the street literally.
Been offered €300 for the cancelled flight.
BA call agent told me 'BA has no responsibility to get you to your original destination'
BA said I'm not entitled to any compensation for having no luggage for 2 days as “you can't put a price on the misery caused….”

Is the above tact from BA correct?

Do I have any further recourse?

Thanks in advance.

golfmad

I've had a response already which is quite impressive. They are escalating it to consider the information I provided.

V10

Mostly, it probably is. I guess you arrived within 4 hours of your original arrival time in BWI, hence the 300 euros compensation.

For the other stuff you'll need to point to actual costs incurred. Luggage going walkies for a couple of days will be hard to quantify. If you lost nothing and had other items at your disposal at your destination, meaning no need to buy new items on arrival to keep yourself clothed, then it's probably hard luck but no compensation.

Similarly for costs getting to your original destination, it might depend on what options were on the table to begin with - if the reroute was at your request then BA isn't obliged to assume your onward transportation costs, since they still had the option to get you to your original destination on a subsequent flight.

The rest is crap customer service, but you're unlikely to see much in the way of compensation (and certainly not of the financial variety) for that.

golfmad

Here's the response I received. Seems a bit of an attempt at a cop out and I can't see any new information from BA to mitigate the claim from their standpoint.

I'd be interested in peoples thoughts. Am I missing a reasonable argument from BA here?

"Thanks for your patience while our Flight Investigations team reviewed your delayed flight to New York on 21 September. I'm very sorry to advise we're still denying your claim under EU legislation, however, I hope I can clarify why.

When the aircraft you were due to travel on was damaged due to a bird strike mandatory safety checks were carried out. During the check of your aircraft our engineers found the randome (a dome that protects the radar equipment) was damaged. The damage needed to be assessed before we could estimate the time it would take to repair, and the length of the delay.

It would have taken us just as long to source and tow a new aircraft onto a stand, cater and refuel a replacement aircraft, as well as load passengers bags and cargo onto the new aircraft. Therefore, it's not always possible for us to use an alternative aircraft because the length of the delay would be a similar time.

In this particular instance we wouldn't have saved any time by changing the aircraft, rather than replacing the randome on the damaged aircraft. I'm afraid this means we still can't pay EU compensation for your delayed journey.

Thanks again for your patience. Please don't hesitate to contact me directly, by using the link below, if I can help you with anything else."

710 77345

No. Just the normal attempts to deny passsengers their rights.

corporate-wage-slave

I can see this is an arguable case from BA's point of view, it's not without some merit.

The argument you could deploy against this is that given that this assessment would be known to take a certain amount of time and have an uncertain outcome, BA could have substituted the aircraft immediately. Alternatively rebooked everyone on the copious number of alternative services. Key to this is the clause stating "extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken". So your argument would be there are a number of reasonable measures that BA could have done but opted not to do so. Plus dealing with bird strike at LHR is an unlikely to be described as "extraordinary" in the first place.

It will be up to the CEDR adjudicator or MCOL judge to weigh this up and decide on the balance of evidence, bearing in mind the Regulation's objective is to ensure a high level of protection for passengers. This sort of correspondence isn't going to be overturned internally by BA in my experience, so you will need to go elsewhere.