Aus_Mal

BA were still claiming weather related cancellations last night ex LHR - Nope, they just didn't want certain planes in certain locations.

Ksmax

For all those who tried to defend BA here, whoever you are and whether or not you're hired by BA or paid to do so, it must had been intellectually challenging for you to come up with legit argument to defend BA and I respect you for that....... its a tougher job then the current press secretary of WH. However, imagine if your elderly mother, young baby etc were stuck in Terminal 5 for hours with no support (contrary to some claims here and by BA's spin guru) whatsoever, and eventually evicted out in the cold at 2am all on their own in a foreign land, would you accept BA's pathetic attempt to defend (if this is even defensible) themselves? If this was an "extraordinary circumstances" and BA cannot handle this despite their years of experience operating out of LHR, then free up the slots, move to tropical Thailand and let others who can to operate out of LHR. PATHETIC!

rossmacd

The cheapest.

Globaliser

Thank you. We got there in the end.

But I suspect that it's too much to hope that other FT debaters will proceed from a proper sense of perspective about what actually went wrong.

strichener

It certainly wasn't the weather that went wrong and not having sufficient de-icing capacity for your schedule would appear to be an operational deficiency rather than extraordinary circumstances.

TabTraveller

Yes, but this comes down to reasonableness and effective control by the airline.

Clearly, were it not for the poor weather, there would not have been any delays or cancellations. BA's prima facie defence therefore is that the poor weather, being an extraordinary circumstance, was the primary cause.

Now we need to consider whether BA took all reasonable measures to mitigate the delays/cancellations. The allegation is that BA had insufficient de-icing equipment. Let's imagine that BA decided to purchase a de-icing machine for every single aircraft of theirs that could physically be on the ground at any given time. Do the space constraints at LHR allow for this? Quite clearly not. So there is necessarily a limitation on the number of aircraft that could be de-iced at any given time, regardless of the airline's efforts.

One might then ask, whether BA has any effective control over the number of de-icing machines available at LHR on a given day? I would suggest almost certainly not. This will be down to the airport operator controlling the plant permitted onto the airfield and the contractors engaged to undertake the de-icing of aircraft being able to get staff to the airport.

Given that the primary issue seems to have stemmed from the weather and to have been exacerbated by factors largely beyond the control of BA, I cannot see how a claim to delay compensation under EC 261/2004 could succeed.

xenole

You could put blame anywhere to be honest.

You could say that the operators of the airport, running it at 97% capacity or whatever, are just asking for trouble at the first sign any of anything weather related etc. as there's no real leeway so flights have to be cancelled and then the onus drops onto BA or whoever.
.

strichener

Weak, very weak. Weather is not event, we have weather all the time and nothing in the last week has been unusual. I would understand it if BA had to cancel flights if we had a 40 degree heatwave as this would be extraordinary. Freezing and snow in any part of the UK isn't.

ahmetdouas

Can someone please try and claim compensation?

I can see it going like this:

You file the compensation claim, BA says no, it was 'extraordinary circumstances', then you insist and go MCOL. Then I would hope BA pays up in order to avoid a court case being public and it appearing all over the media.

Worst case, it fails, not the end of the world, but it would be good to find out!

TabTraveller

The media, rightly, has very little interest in what a deputy district judge in Croydon has to say about the matter so I don't think BA is likely to offer a settlement just to keep a claim out of the public eye. Worst case is actually that you manage to irritate the court with what is fairly clearly vexatious litigation and you end up with an adverse costs order against you, even in a small claims matter.

Apply some common sense (which is what the court will do): it snowed. It rarely snows in London. This meant that planes could not land or take off as normal for very legitimate safety reasons. Some people had their travel plans disrupted as a result. Even if BA had unlimited space and resource, there still would have been significant disruption. Move on.

TabTraveller

I’m afraid that you are confused. No one is arguing that it doesn't snow in London. It sometimes does. Or even that snow is extraordinary. Although it seems to be a rare occurrence. It is not the weather that is, in itself, extraordinary but the impact of that weather upon the airline, which could not be mitigated even if it had taken all reasonable measures.

strichener

Is that a medical diagnosis?

The impact of the weather was not extraordinary on other operators out of Heathrow. Can we assume that they took unreasonable measures to ensure that this wasn't the case?

strichener

Get a grip, it quite clearly would not be when the airline has had to cancel flights days after the event.
BA quite often use the argument that only x amount of the delay was down to their operational control and y was ATC etc. The same applies in reverse.

Andriyko

And could you elaborate which wonderful airlines and their magic steps you are referring to? I can see that LX canceled 7 out 12 services on Sunday (the other 5 were delayed). LH canceled 9 out of 19. AF and KL did better (fewer cancellations but significant delays). All airlines were impacted by the weather and the fact that LHR is significantly constrained in its ability to deal with it (something that every other poster chooses to ignore). So, yes, weather does happen, but if the airport's facilities do not allow dealing with it efficiently what do you suggest airlines do?

A single 'event' can wreak havoc on operations for days. You can't bring back aircraft and crew and position them where they need to be in an instant. Again, something that many posters choose to ignore because they really really want for BA to 'suck' and 'be pathetic'. Of course, in addition to operating at a parallel Universe LHR where there is all this space for all these de-icing machines, and where cleaning a runway does not require closing one, and where closing a runway does not require decreasing the flow of flights, and where there is all this spare room to park aircraft while they await deicing, BA can also have twice the number of aircraft it needs just in case it needs a bunch of spare aircraft every once in a while. That would be reasonable, right?

ahmetdouas

Maybe LHR paying compensation for being a useless airport due to it being overcrowded and doing nothing about it for years, and as a result, negatively affecting passengers would cause the govt to speed up things with expansion?
While BA is the usual suspect for incompetence, my main blame lies on the UK government for not getting its act together and expanding LHR from the Thatcher era, let alone the Brexit era!

I mean someone has to be responsible for this, and it is not the passenger! The weather was by no means extraordinary, and by the way, it snows at least once a year in South East England and easily becomes Icy/below freezing a few times a year as well, whether or not it snows!