corporate-wage-slave

I don't think this is looking good for you. If UA cancelled the flight - and assuming BA didn't know about it at the time of rebooking - then it's down to UA to provide compensation. Now this is where it gets finicky. The courts have now ruled that airlines are responsible for non European connecting flights, however American airlines have so far resisted taking on this liability. I suspect over time that will happen, but as things stand your claim is against UA, not BA, and I've no idea how UA will respond to a claim. Now there isn't enough information to be sure about other approaches, since I'm not sure if it's BA or AA going to ORD and / or any delay on BIO-LHR. If it was Thursday's flight then that got into LHR at 13:06 on a schedule of 13:00. But looking at this by all means try claiming against UA but you may be looking at a customer service gesture there. If there are any right to care aspects, then you could still look to BA if UA decline.

Off the topic of EC261, it's disappointing that the T3 to T5 connection didn't work well for your relatives, though yesterday was a very busy day for LHR. I guess a 6 minute delay didn't help either. I'm surprised BA didn't find another JFK service but there again I imagine they couldn't find onward seats on AA late on. In that situation I would probably have asked to go JFK-LAX-SFO rather than accept United. But hindsight is marvellous.

pebadian

"yay" got an email that flight 8736 LCY - FRA tonight is cancelled and the next available flight is tomorrow at 16:10 from LHR. Not really great but at least the two of us are waitlisted now for all earlier FRA flights and they said as Gold there might be a chance to get on one. Advise is to call again around 8/9pm.

The reason seems to be expected Thunderstorms in London, which means there's not even compensation. Most of the hotline people didn't even see the reason as It was just one of them mentioning it after asking all of them. Also no info about duty of care at all. I guess we'll have a right to accommodation, meals, transport? Hard to know how much this is in 21 hours, also no info about any of that. (even after asking) Doesn't feel like the greatest IRROPS by BA.

bil

Thank you for your answer CWS. As an update they're still in ORDas their flight UA 2290 has got delayed until 15:00 PM.

It was indeed that flight from BIO and LHR-ORD was on BA. I now know that the delay is due to some technical problem of the aircraft. Under American law, the carriers don't pay compensation if the delay is their fault?


That would have, presumably, gone better but they are not very used to air travel.

corporate-wage-slave

I'm afraid that is the case, their usual stance is "we are going to get you there just as fast as we can, even if it is a middle economy seat at the back", which they tend to be very slick at doing. But it stops there. Now they tend to be a bit more obliging on the customer service side if it's mechanical (if it's weather then all bets are off) and they should have got accommodation etc. However strictly speaking - well not even strictly speaking - this is a EU to USA booking and the law now protects the entire trip. So they should certainly claim EC261 at 600€ per person from United, and consider how hard they want to fight for it, especially if they are European residents.

SK AAR

I fail to see UA paying EU Reg. 261/04 compensation for a cancellation/delay of their ORD-SFO flight. In the view of UA this is not a flight ex EU. It is of no relevance to UA that the pax originated in EU on BA flights. If UA had also been the carrier ex EU it would have been different. I believe this mirrors the position of IRROPS for AA flights in the US for BA pax originating in EU.

NWIFlyer

The view of UA doubtless differs from the view of the law, but it’s the latter they have to abide by. There are clearly some practical difficulties in obtaining enforcement if a non-EU airline point blank refuses to comply with a court judgment, but if they have a UK office I’m pretty sure if pushed to the ultimate sanction via continued court enforcement they probably wouldn’t particularly want bailiffs knocking on their door with a view to seizing property.

As cws indicates, it really depends how much attitude anyone has for a long term fight.

Pc2k24

corporate-wage-slave

This probably would be treated as a weather delay by BA which won't get compensation. Going into more detail here, you were 1 hr 43 mins late, of which 42 minutes was late inbound, 1 hour was bad weather, and let's say 20 minutes due to runway congestion at JFK. There again the aircraft made up about 20 minutes when airborne. You would have missed your DUB connection if you arrived into LHR after 10;00, so any delay over 25 minutes was going to push you over. I guess there is an argument that had the aircraft left on time then you should have made the (tight) connection, but there may have been runway congestion at that stage too. I doubt BA would see this logic, but there is no harm applying and seeing what happens. I'm surprised BA didn't offer an Aer Lingus alternative to BA, but it's a busy time of the year so there may not have been seats.

Pc2k24

simons1

Good luck to the poster in making that one stick. UA will no doubt argue they were only involved here because of the failure of the first flight on BA and as such should not be expected to carry the risk. I don't think EC261 makes specific reference to such situations and much as UA wouldn't want the bailiffs appearing they do also have deep pockets. So I wonder whether a long drawn out court saga with possible appeals and costs would really be wise here.

Maybe a bit of advice from Bott & Co would be appropriate?

danger

Does a crew member falling ill come under extraordinary circumstances and therefore exclude BA from liability?

corporate-wage-slave

Depends on context. If it's on board a service which is flying (and therefore leads to a diversion) then that's extraordinary. If a flight is delayed due to a crew not turning up for a flight in LHR or LGW then probably not - unless there is an outbreak of Bubonic Plague in the London Borough of Hillingdon, in which case all bets are off. Several court judgements have indicated that a commonsense use of the word extraordinary can be applied.

UKtravelbear

To a degree it depends on the expectation - and how reasonable that expectation is - that an airline will have spare crew hanging about at every outstation or how easy it is to get one to an airport from another one and to a degree that depends on the airports involved.


As c-w-s says at LHR and LGW you can more than reasonably expect BA to have crew either there on standby or within a short distance away on call but they are main bases. Personally I'd say the same for JFK where BA has several flights a day but I know others might disagree with me on that.

danger

Thank you both. This week I was scheduled to fly from an outstation (outside the EU but an airport BA serves more than once a day). We were notified at check-in of a circa 45 minute delay apparently due to weather impacting the inbound's departure from LHR. At the gate, a few minutes after the original departure time but before the revised, we were told the flight had been cancelled due to an I'll FO. It was BA's last departure of the day. We were re-scheduled 24 hours later.

I'd be an interested in people's thoughts on whether or not this is due EU261. We've all been given transportation, food and overnight accommodation which on the face of it is great (although the ground handling was appalling). On the flipside, was it really illness or is BA just saying that because it can?

corporate-wage-slave

There have been a number of these cases of this in the last few weeks. I doubt that BA would give this reason out incorrectly since it could easily be found out if wrong, though mis-communication can happen anywhere. If the flight was in the last 3 days or so you (or we) can check the dispatch information on Expertflyer since there is a cancellation or delay code. But that may just be ZO (operational) which is fairly meaningless.

If the crew normally back to back on the service (so don't come off a night stop) then it would - to my mind - be extraordinary if the First Officer was too ill to return. If it is a multi-night stop location and multiple crews then there may have been some wriggle room for crew members to be swapped over (New York being as UKtravelbear pointed out the most well equipped to do this). Maybe this is a location where they could have got a crew member out to the out-station fairly quickly though if it was the last service of the day that may or may not have been possible. Depends when BA found out and the flight time of outbound service, I would guess. But if it was somewhere like IST - which had a diversion to Split a few weeks ago on this issue - or DME then it's probably unreasonable to expect BA to have standby crew available to take over from at short notice.

The other area to consider is that even we accept that a sick FO on the inbound was extraordinary, then BA are not off the hook for resolving the issue. There are court rulings that point out that even if extraordinary circumstances are involved, it doesn't give the airline a carte blanche to delay passengers unnecessarily. If there were other services, perhaps joint business airlines, then BA could be expected to get passengers to London faster than 24 hours late.