I fully agree on this... There is no legal precedent for it and BA is (IMHO) going to use it against the plaintiff... Introducing statements like that is just giving ammunition to the defence lawyers, giving them clear indication that OP does not have any idea on how to legal system works...

Hi

New to FT and hoping someone can advise on whether it's worth pursuing BA further for compensation...

We flew from Vegas to Edinburgh via LHR - booked on a single ticket with a 2.5 hour transfer time.
Inbound flight was delayed - 40 minutes, plus they just took ages to disembark, get us on buses etc. Whole process was ridiculously slow. We then got to passport control which had fairly long queues. Waited for a bit then asked for assistance because of our connecting flight. The member of staff went over and spoke to BA then came back and said "BA said you're fine to queue, you've got 45 minutes til your flight"...ok
We cleared passport control at 5:05, connection at 5:30. Went to get boarding pass scanned and 'beeep' rejected, go speak to another member of staff who said we weren't allowed to board as we were too late. We're still just beside passport control at this point. Mentioned our luggage was on board and was told it had already been offloaded - this clearly wasn't true as the person immediately in front of us was allowed through to catch the Edinburgh flight. We were told there was a flight at 6:20pm and to go downstairs and get rebooked.
Got downstairs to find the queue from hell, again asked for assistance because we didn't have long until the next flight and was told "tough, everybody is waiting" except many were waiting for rebooking to flights the next day. 18:00 I checked the app to see if it had auto-rebooked as I've had this happen before, to discover that our original flight still hadn't even left (probably delayed whilst they found our luggage!!) so we could have caught it easily.
We eventually ended up rebooked on a flight just before 10pm.

Contacted BA, and they're refusing compensation on the basis that "they're not responsible for queues, and even after being delayed in I should have made my connection"

Has anybody dealt with a situation like this before? I can just about understand their argument for passport control even though they told them not to prioritise us, but everything else seems squarely BAs fault. Late arrival, denied boarding for a flight we could have caught, huge queues making us miss the next one (putting us over the compensation delay time...)

Not sure whether to pursue further so would appreciate some advise. They haven't offered so much as an Avios point.

Welcome to Flyertalk IrritableTraveller and welcome to the BA forum. With a handle like that I suspect you will find this great therapy! Welcome on board and I hope that we see more of you elsewhere in this forum.

On the face of it I think you have a strong case for delay compensation, it's going to be that or IDB, but IDB is the weaker argument of the two due to the wording around that Regulation. In this case it is true that some of the queues are outwith the control of BA (security, passports, the T3 to T5 bus transfer) but Flight Connections is not - the downstairs bit I don't quite understand, since UK Flight Connections and the Customer Assistance desks are on the same level. Not that it matters, BA is responsible for the queue there, the bus transfers off the Las Vegas service and so on. Had the things under BA's control had been better organised, it seems from the information provided you would have made the flight. I'm slightly tentative since we've only got some of the timings here, and by the sounds of it, it was a bad weather day too if it took this long to get through the system. [For information, if it looks this bad, consider going landside to get assistance from Zone F in Departures instead.]

So what I would do is work out the timings as clearly as you can, step by step, and work through the process in post 1, based on BA not doing all they could to avoid the delays at T5. It doesn't matter too much if you have to guess some timings, the usual cut off for getting through UK Connections for the EDI service is 35 minutes before departure. The Regulation is intended to prevent circumstances like this. But you need to be fairly clear in your mind what aspects are under BA's control, which are not, and how this impacted your ability to get on your booked flight. A 40 minute delay on a 2.5 hour connection should normally give you well over an hour to get through UK Flight Connections, which seems more than generous (and might explain why BA are pushing back).

I did give BA more exact timings but it's been nearly a month so they're a tad sketchier now!

OK, had a better look for timings as the 40 minutes had come from BA. Assuming flightaware is correct then we were 1:08 late inbound - we should have landed at 14:55 for a 17:30 connection, but instead got to the gate at 16:03. I think the 40 minutes they're claiming relates to the following day (overnight flight so maybe mixing up departure vs arrival) but interestingly that means the delay took us just under the 1 hr 30 stated connection time. Our scheduled flight home was 17:30, it left the gate at 17:51

We cleared passport control at 17:05, came through to where they scan the boarding passes (right beside passport control) and weren't allowed through. We were then told to go to the ticketing desks (which I could swear were on another floor but it was a long day!) where we queued until approx 18:40

We got the 20:55 flight home.

Does that help to clarify what happened? I'd taken the 40 minutes from their emails but if flightaware is accurate then they're nearly half an hour out which makes a big difference to the situation, I think anyway! Their argument throughout has been that we had over two hours to connect after we landed and queues aren't their fault.

Yes, that sounds more plausible, in my head you were missing 30 minutes or so (and I deleted a sentence asking whether you had gone for a cigarette or something!) In which case the connection at that point was still just about do-able but stretchy, getting to UK Passports at 17:05 is too late for what was presumably still then expected to be a 17:30 departure (technically doors could close at 17:10). It wouldn't surprise me if the 21 minute delay to that service was due to them delaying baggage loading due to late connections! The bus between T3 and T5 takes about 12 minutes, there can be a 10 minute wait, then there is all the walking around T3 and a bit of T5, plus perhaps 10 minutes to get off the Vegas aircraft, so that makes it more plausible than your earlier post.

Do you know the reason for the delay from Vegas? That's the next part in the jigsaw.

Depending on the answer to that, it will be worth going back to BA and pointing out they may have the wrong date - it's a rather basic mistake but easily done if someone wasn't being careful.

Thanks!

They've already admitted that the delay was due to "aircraft rotation" so I don't think they've got a leg to stand on from that perspective, unless they're going to allege that god rotated the aircraft!

I've gone back and asked them to confirm the data they hold and stating it wasn't 40 minutes; I checked our messages and my husband sent a message to his dad saying "just landed" at 16:07 which ties in far better. I know we were still on the plane when he sent that.

We genuinely missed it by about 1 minute - they let the person in front of us through - so being 3 minutes short of the 90 minute connection seems to have made the difference for us.

The sole question here will be whether the 40-minute delay or the various unfortunate delays outside of BA's control caused the misconnect. In turn BA and then MCOL / CEDR will have that chance.

1. I still am not certain I understand the import of the "delayed rotation" here. Was the push from LAS delayed by 40 minutes due to the incoming or did something happen enroute? Even a delayed push from LAS is not necessarily a winner for OP. It is an outstation and not 40 minutes would not likely have been made up even if OP had a spare aircraft and crew sitting at the ready which it does not (and need not).

2. Long lines beyond BA's control are somewhat like the weather and ATC.

This one may well be a slog.

We were delayed leaving Vegas - we got even further back en route but that could have been due to missing takeoff slot as we seemed to take a very long time to actually take off.

I'm not sure I understand the rest of your points I'm afraid, I fly a lot but I'm no expert. I've clarified that we weren't 40 minutes late landing, it was 1:08. The BA queues just made the delay worse as we couldn't then catch the next flight which would have put us under the compensation claim time limit. When I mentioned aircraft rotation - that was the reason they have given. They haven't claimed any exceptional reason beyond their control - the reason they're currently fighting is based on "we don't control queues" but they've been claiming a 40 minute delay rather than the true time which I think makes a fair difference to their argument as the delay put us under (just!) their stated minimum transfer times

I think everything beyond that is gravy?

Hi fellow FTers, quick update following my failed CEDR for EC261 relating to a cancelled flight caused by the BA strikes.

I decided that life was too short to progress the claim myself thru the courts, despite offers of help from those on FT, so I handed my claim over to Bott & Co on a no win no fee basis. They have recently emailed me an update that my claim is on hold pending the decision on a test case making its way thru the courts.

Should be interesting either way !

Ooooh, just noticed that I will be 20yrs on FT this coming May :-)

Mind you, at a total of 1126 messages, I'm not the most prolific poster.

Thanks for that update, and to help those late to the story, this is for the cancellations caused by the Mixed Fleet Strike in the middle of 2017. There were two groups affected - those such as yourself on Mixed Fleet routes who had a cancellation, to the best of my knowledge no-one has yet succeeded getting Article 7 compensation from that. Another group who were on flights with crews not on strike, but where the flight was cancelled in order to run other services which would have been strike impacted. This second group has been getting Article 7 since BA have been settling these cases before court hearings. It would be interesting to hear if Bott do proceed with a case, here is their article from earlier this year where they argued the case that the strikes were under BA's contol.

https://www.bottonline.co.uk/flight-...in-crew-strike

Out of interest.TIM T What was the reason CEDR gave as was considering that path.
I have just sent this to BA through their site where you get no record of what you sent so copy pasted it. If they still don't respond maybe Ill use Bott+Co

Sent to BA today 6 Feb 2018 copy and pasted message

My parwnts were flying in paid business class on 1/30/18 from MAA to LHR to LAX.

After spending several hours at the airport facing several delays the flight was eventually cancelled. They got rescheduled on the same flights the next day and arrived a full 24 hours delayed.

they said at the airport the agents were saying they had mechanical difficulties at first then posted that is was cancelled because of technical issues.

Are they able to claim any sort of compensation? When they asked at the airport the gate agent said no. I find this hard to believe.

They usually fly Emerites to India, so they decided to post the miles to AA instead when they got the original tickets issues. Not sure if that matters.

please let me know what type of compensation they are entitled to and the proper avenues to direct their complaints.

much appreciated in advance

You didnt say but since you posted here i would assume they flew BA. (EU Airline)
They claimed Mech failure, have you gotten any proof? Get one either the delay or the cancel one from the link (Non act-of-nature)
final arrival time at LAX delayed 24 hours (>4 hours)

You shall have good chance of the 600EUR x2 depending what the actual events were. and if you have any additional costs (accomodation, food....) for those 24 hours delay in MAA you may submit receipts for claiming too. if they push back, state your reasons again along with the Ec261/2004 claim (Should be unlikely that they do anyways)

I am not sure they would be entitled. I was under the impression that the compensation was all about end to end delay, i.e. the time you left your first ticketed airport to the time you got to the final one. In this case both the first and final were outside the EU, therefore EU261 would not apply?