It doesn't greatly matter, but if you use the Royal Mail with some recorded delivery option then you know that someone has signed for it on a given date. I presume this is for the 16 day letter before action, if so then normally there isn't a reply to that, and on day 17 you press the MCOL buttons.

Thanks for the advice. I have issued the claim now. I checked the box saying I will send the particulars of the claim. So that's what I'm doing now.

Ah, OK, not everyone does that (and then BA puts a snarky note in to the court to highlight that fact, which makes me smile given normally the communication process is usually somewhat lopsided). Yes in that case, send them to BA via post and recorded delivery. And / or consider drawing up a Skeleton argument, a 1 or 2 page bullet pointed summary, suitable for a judge to understand the background and the law points upon which you are relying. It's not a requirement, but it make life easier for everyone.

Your case is about a MF strike involving MF crew, so be aware that this is quite edgy stuff. Bott and Co is considering doing a test case, apparently, but I've not seen any evidence of this yet.

This talk of Bott etc makes me wonder how reliable their predictors of success are. If they say they think you have a valid claim, is that generally a good indication?

CEDR for cancelled 787 flight to Sjc not successful on the grounds of extraordinary circumstances. This despite not being called that in BA's initial defence. Disappointed although not suprised! I will try the next step to take it through to a conclusion and see what happens. RR still say it's a wear and tear issue not a hidden defect. Worth a punt.

From what I read, many of these agencies tend to take on "slam dunk" cases and avoid any with grey areass.

If Bott said 'yes' online then it should be strait forward.

Thanks for that feedback. That RR line, if submitted to CEDR, would strike me as a very relevant point but I guess that's also linked into some sort of emergency recall process. If it's been through CEDR then my suspicion is that you will need to put a lot of thought into constructing the MCOL approach.

Bott is a good measure because it has its own resources and thus money on the line. If it does not prevail, it does not make any money. If it does that enough, it will become insolvent.

This is not to say that there is not some kook judge somewhere who on a given day won't go your way. But, it is a good belleweather as to the result you will see for your time and effort.

Maybe a silly question but when Bott and Co or MCOL cases succeed, do BA only have to pay the compensation or do BA also incur courts costs and other charges ?? It seems some sort of penalty/ deterrent is requires to make BA more proactive with their responses and to fully substantiate the reason for the cancellation or delay from the onset. BA are privy to the circumstances and if they know a passenger has a legitimate case why not simply pay what is due or we end up playing bluff wasting ever bodies time and money. It would be interesting if the statistics of how many legitimate claims BA turned down were eventually paid up and made public. Maybe a independent 3rd party is needed where airlines have to submit supportive documents for audit and the results made freely available.

Yes, if BA are on the losing side of the argument they have to pay the court costs as well as the compensation, as well as a limited range of the complainants costs too (e.g. postage and photocopying, potentially interest). If the claimant loses then they lose whatever they have sunk into court fees already but are rarely pinged for additional costs. The exception is if the complainant doesn't turn up in court, then BA has in the past asked the judge for their costs to be recovered and judges may (or may not) ping £250 or so on to the complainant - judges are not impressed when this happens. However, with that exception apart, if it gets to a court hearing, and in particular if BA need supporting legal advice, the costs for the airline are pretty significant and not recoverable regardless of outcome, and in theory that's quite a deterrent.

The regulator for this area is the CAA - which has a fairly mixed record in this area, putting it politely. It set up ADR / CEDR so that it didn't get snowed under with the minutae of cases, and occasionally has funded legal fees for passengers against airlines not in the ADR.

Wanted to share my ongoing experience around BA rejecting my request for compensation after ending up in the wrong country and being delayed over 24 hours, back in December. I was on a flight from DXB-LHR, a completley routine flight until around 45 minutes before we were due to land, the captain announced he is very sorry but due to there being nowhere to park the aircraft at LHR, the flight is turning around and diverting to France (CDG), and is being cancelled. The usual woeful experience on the ground then followed, I stayed at CDG for the night and eventually flew back to LHR on the same aircraft with the same crew the following evening, a full 24 hours later.

BA rejected my claim for EC261 compensation with a blanket response stating the delay was caused due to operational circumstances outside their control, blaming the weather, de-icing problems and earlier air traffic control restrictions. I responded, rejecting this, and pointing out that the allocation of parking spaces for aircraft is the airline's responsibility, as is the de-icing operation which failed and they blamed as the knock-on reason. I also pointed out that there are publically accessable records which show, at the precise time we were scheduled to land and directly thereafter, there were many other aircraft operating, both landing and taking off (including BA aircraft) from LHR. I also pointed out that snowfall in the UK in August would be extraordinary. In December it is not.

BA responded again, saying they don't comment on other airline's operations but safety is their top priority, and the delay was caused by extraordinary circumstances because they had de-icing problems earlier in the day, and also their third party supplier ran out of supplies (they don't mention who, or what ran out). You might notice by this point they still have not addressed the issue of parking allocation and have so far avoided mentioning it in their responses.

The captain articulatley explained to us, as we were flying back across the English channel, the reason we could not land was because the allocation of parking spaces for the incoming aircraft had failed. My perception therefore is that this is not an extraordinary event, but an operational failure of BA which appears to have been caused by another earlier operational failure, when they attempted to de-ice their aircraft but it went wrong and ended up in a rather big mess. The relaibility of BA's third party suppliers is not my concern, I am a customer of BA and they are responsible for delivering the service using reliable partners.

I wonder, was anybody else here caught up by the "parking space issue" and have they got BA to agree to EC compensation? I'm also wondering what the most effective next step is. Any and all ideas welcomed! Many thanks.

Welcome to Flyertalk JNU84, and welcome to the BA Board, though the circumstances that brought you here sound quite difficult, reading between the lines.

That day a number of aircraft were diverted, I'm sure you have seen the thread elsewhere in this forum where BA struggled to operate the airport and there were diversions all over the show. There are going to be two schools of thought here, and I'll present them both. Firstly there was a weather event at the time, and that did lead to disruption. Broadly speaking weather and ATC related delays don't give rise to Article 7 payments, moreover when you are in diversion category - something no airline would willingly want to do - then your chances of getting EC261 are not looking very good.

The other perspective is that there are plenty of people - including some who work at LHR - who feel that BA's own lack of resourcing contributed to the problems, and that in particular BA could / should have done more to avoid the pile up with de-icing. On later bad weather days BA tried to head this off with proactive cancellations, your particular day was one where they didn't do these proactive cancellations, for reasons which have not been explained. The wording of EC261 sets quite a high bar for the airline and you may be able to make a persuasive case for why not all reasonable measures were taken in your case. The Regulation is framed in terms of customer protection rather than keeping airlines in a good place.

If you are happy with the risk, given the Regulation's wording does classify "meteorological conditions incompatible with the operation of the flight concerned" as out of scope, then you need to consider a carefully drafted MCOL submission, based on the steps outlined in post 1. I would not take this to CEDR, they would be better if it was a totally overwhelming case and my perception is that this is not in that category. I'm not aware of anyone else being successful with EC261 for the diversions that day, there again it was fairly recent and so the evidence is perhaps not there yet. Plus some people get very shy about it!

I simply don't see this as successful. There is only so far any commercially viable business can go to plan and deal with every event which might occur. At LHR, BA simply is not like other carriers. It is the worldwide hub and that unfortunately means that when the LON airspace is affected, BA is affected more than others. Same for DL at ATL, LH at FRA and AA at DFW.

This is one to pursue if you have time and understand that it may be for naught.