Corpt

Thanks. I'm filing MCOL against both Norwegian and its UK subsidiary at the latter's UK address.

I'll keep you posted on progress.

Tobias-UK

I would suggest you contact them in the first instance (as per my earlier post) before commencing proceedings. You must give notice of proceedings. Asking them for an address in the UK where they will accept service of proceedings is not an unusual request and one that might save you a lot of time. If you proceed against the wrong defendant you risk having your claim thrown out.

Charlie Whiskey

Thanks to all for your detective work on my behalf. I will see what I can elicit (and record) at the airport and from the crew, but on the face of it (if the dent report is true) this is fairly straightforward, presuming that the delay does indeed trigger some aspect of EU 261.

Corpt

OK, good advice thanks. What if they ignore my request for the UK address?

awestphal

Ouch +1. As per the arrivals board, there is only one flight arriving into JNB after 22:00 requiring immigration, and that an RJ145 of out Harare. Adding an A380 to an immigration queue staffed for an RJ145. One can only hope that the immigration staff's late shift is actually around until midnight ;-).

Firipu

I had a 30 hour delay earlier this year and was able to successfully claim EU261 for a technical failure when an external power unit damaged the plane.

When you check in / drop off your luggage, ask them for a letter explaining the delay for insurance purposes. I believe that by law they have to provide you with something, but only when asked, and mine was a pre-printed letter at the check in counter next to the agent (ie. not on the counter itself). That letter will hopefully give you some information about the cause of the delay.

Corpt

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Norwegian are refusing (through their call centre and online chat) to provide a UK service address. They insist everything has to be sent to the Norway address. Very frustrating!

corporate-wage-slave

In which case the best way is to serve notice on this address:

Frode Berg
Chief Legal Officer
NORWEGIAN AIR UK LIMITED
First Point, Buckingham Gate,
Gatwick Airport,
England,
RH6 0NT

MCOL essentially needs a UK address so using the Norway address is unhelpful to this process. Something of which Norwegian is surely aware.

Corpt

Thanks CWS, that's the address I found at Companies House. I'm sure Norwegian will be completely aware that their stance is unhelpful, which maybe why they adopt that stance in the first place.

Fitch

They will no doubt reject it in the first instance, but let's hope they fail to refute it

amanx

I had this happen on a US carrier flying RSW to Charlotte. The truck drove into the plane. And damaged exterior lights which took a long time to fix.

Which meant i missed my overseas connection.

Charlie Whiskey

Just to update on this. In the event the crew were very informative on the reasons for the delay: the original aircraft (G-XLEE) scheduled for BA 055 on the evening of 17th burst a tyre on landing at LHR from LAX that morning, and tyre debris damaged the aircraft fuselage skin and also a window, and had to be taken out of service. The only possible replacement (G-XLEF) could not be made available until the following day, hence the 15 hour delay in departure.

Much time was made up at JNB but eventually we landed this morning 330 minutes late (flightstats.com) so it seems clear to me that there were no allowable exceptional circumstances, and my 261 claim will be for Euros 600 for each of me and Mrs Charlie Whiskey.

ahmetdouas

deleted

Charlie Whiskey

I shall; and I think this tread is an excellent example of BAEC Flyertalk at its best: nothing but helpful, knowledgeable and interesting advice and comments.^

Charlie Whiskey

An update on this.

I duly submitted my EC261 claim, the narrative of which I am happy to post here if anybody is interested. This morning I got a call from a nice lady in BA Customer Relations. She apologized for the delay and offered to reimburse any out of pocket expenses we had incurred.

She then went on to explain that the delay was actually caused by a multiple bird-strike to the scheduled aircraft (which she confirmed as G-XLEE) damaging an engine, and not - according to her technical report - any damage to the tyre. The European Court of Justice has, of course, ruled that bird-strikes are indeed an exceptional circumstance that negates an EU 261 claim (Pešková and Peška –v- Travel Service A.S. C-315/15).

She asked me from where I had got my information as to the cause, which was in my submission: the captain and CSM of the replacement aircraft as well as basource.com. I note, although did not mention, that Jumbodriver has reported on here on a separate but related thread about this incident and another :
" Neither were actually tyre bursts either. One was some tread detaching from a main wheel and hitting the wing, and the other was a nose wheel damaged by a push back tug".

We left it that she would do some further enquiries and come back to me, and has just emailed me saying inter alia, : "As discussed, I've sent asked our Flight Investigations team to look into the reason for your delay in more detail. I'll contact you as soon as I have more information. For my part I said that I would ask for a deadlock letter and go to straight to MCOL if my claim was eventually rejected. I also mentioned that I did hope that BA had made a genuine mistake in the info she had been given, rather than was trying to deliberately deceive me .

All perfectly amicable (after all she isn't writing the script she has to use), but let's see what happens. Anybody out there hear about a multiple bird-strike to G-XLEE on 17th September?