If you don't book accommodation - so stay in the airport - then you can't claim for it, which explains some of the cases in the AA forum. Hence by all means endeavour to persuade AA to get you a hotel and then use an App to get your own accommodation, which AA will have no choice in law but to refund. I must admit I wouldn't try too hard with AA, since their hotel voucher system has numerous imperfections. Now Marriott is the chain with which I am the least familiar, but the CWS endorsed hotel for MIA is the Hilton, partly because their shuttle is so good. I also see plenty of Holiday Inn / HIX vans go by in MIA, but that's the only reason. For all I know Marriott also have some good options for MIA.

Can I ask a question here which is prompted by this particular conversation? I have a CEDR claim in at the moment for which I have gotten invaluable advice on FT. But earlier this year, I was on a BA ticketed BNE-SIN-LHR where BNE-SIN was on QF and then connecting with BA for SIN-LHR. The QF leg went tech and we were delayed for 24 hours, finally getting home via QF/BA on a BNE-SYD-HND-LHR. QF sorted hotel, transfers, meals etc so that's all been taken care of. At the time I was told EC261 was not applicable because (a) the tech flight was on QF and (b) the leg affected was not to or from the EU.

Reading the AA related post above, I am beginning to wonder whether I do indeed have a case, seeing that the flight was all BA ticketed and it was to the EU, where I arrived 24 hours late.

What's the thoughts on this please?

Q1 in this post suggests it's the operating carrier that matters in your situation. I would hazard a guess that in the Emirates/AA situation the origin was ex EU and this was also the flight that led to further complications, which is why it was covered by EC261?

BA107 10 nov...lhr/dxb...doors open 2131 GMT (0131 local time )

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/...245Z/EGLL/OMDB

STD 1235
ATD 1413
STA 2345
ATA 0128

So the arrival delay (like the departure delay) was less than two hours.

Where do you look for the doors open time?

You may be right. However it's this current thread: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...overnight.html that had me thinking. The only real difference here is that in this thread, BA is the ticketing and operating carrier, whereas in my situation BA was ticketing but QF was operating that sector. The whole trip was on one PNR therefore I was delayed in arriving at my EU destination having purchased a ticket on an EU carrier.

It's this grey area that I am unsure of and I can't seem to get a clear answer from reading the relevant rules. Has anyone had a similar situation and made a claim?

And that is the critical point. QF is not a Community carrier and you were not starting in Europe, see the first few posts in this thread. Ticketing airline has no impact on EC261 questions.

I don't think that's publicly available. That's one of the bits of help that an insider can give if there's a case that's very close to the line - if cbagent had posted a couple of minutes earlier, I wouldn't have bothered. However, in zeel's case the flight's delay was so far short of any of the prescribed durations that the difference between arrival and doors open really didn't matter.

Oh well, worth a try! Thanks all.

Saw this over on the QR forum: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/qata...ess-story.html

It seems that the primary (and very simplified!) requirements for EC261 to apply is either (i) the flights are operated by an EU airline and (a) is either ex EU or (b) the final destination is in the EU or (ii) a non EU airline with the first leg being ex EU regardless of which leg causes the delay to the final destination.

To be honest I'd never given much thought to factoring this into my plans when booking flights, although with downgrades, re-routing, delays etc all covered that may well swing things for me in the future when considering which inbound flight(s) to take.

Thanks again to all (and CWS) for their extensive knowledge on this topic.