Finkface

Many thanks as always for your continued help, corporate-wage-slave. You are a star and this forum would be lost without you. Yes, that was BA’s response to CEDR. I did as you suggested and sent a note to CEDR and asked for a ruling. But can they actually force BA to pay? Or do they just rule that they have to pay and BA can continue to ignore it?

corporate-wage-slave

My reckoning is that if CEDR make a ruling, BA have to pay you direct via their paralegal team and immediately. Moreover if they don't pay CEDR will be on to them. It's just a way of getting pressure applied. My guess is that whoever replied to CEDR has told the Payments team that there will be further rework for them unless they act quickly. You best move is to calmly but firmly keep them to the timetable. BA also have to pay an additional and avoidable fee to CEDR for this.

chrisnasah

Hello,

Need some advice if possible, i have already discussed this on another thread which is now closed but basically my flight China in July was cancelled by BA and they agreed for a full refund. The TA has now charged me a admin fee per ticket and i am down nearly £500, surely this is not a cancellation by me, i did a complain to TA but this has now been rejected.

Do i have an option under EC261 and how do i go about claiming it as what section/act will be related to above claim?

Thanks

caz312

what do the TAs terms and conditions state about admin fees?....they will refer you to those you agreed to

tim0409

I thought I would post about my experience with BA over a claim I lodged a year ago; my flight from EDI to LCY was cancelled due to a technical issue after a 5 hour delay (on the day they handled it really badly, which meant I wasn't offered any other alternative). I filed a claim, which was denied on the basis that "our records show you did not travel on the flight therefore you are not eligible...."! I then emailed/called without any success, so decided to fill out a completed small claims form (Scotland) and send it to Alex Cruz in the hope that his executive team might pick up the issue. They finally accepted that it was a valid claim but thereafter did not follow up with a refund despite follow up emails. I lost patience and filed the claim with courts fees of £104, and added £250 for my time spent in chasing the claim in addition to the flight cost. This was defended by BA; their London based solicitors instructed an Edinburgh law firm. The Sheriff ordered a case management hearing and issued a directive that we should attempt to resolve it before the hearing date. As a result of the directive I sent them a letter with an offer to settle; they responded stating they would revert to their client and get back to me. I never heard from them again; I attended the hearing and BA was represented by a local solicitor - the Sheriff was seriously unimpressed that they hadn't responded to my offer, and continued the case with a stern warning that he really didn't want this coming back to his court. The second hearing was yesterday with the same Sheriff; I explained again that despite his warning I still hadn't had a response. He was really quite angry with BA's solicitor, who said he was still having difficulty in getting a response from his client! I requested that we move to a trial; the Sheriff agreed and warned the BA solicitor that he would be awarding unrestricted costs to me if it goes to trial. As a result my original offer has been withdrawn and the Sheriff has added an additional £500 expenses to the revised offer for my time spent in court. I am utterly bemused how BA could get this so wrong for so long; what should have been a simple £230 claim has now escalated to at least £1200 payable to me (original claim, compensation, expenses, court fees and interest), plus the legal fees for their own solicitors and local court solicitors. Mental!

corporate-wage-slave

The operating airline is responsible for the refund in terms of EC261, though the actual responsibility lies with the travel agent. Article 8.1 applies here and it says you get a full refund. Your options are
- pursue BA for this under CEDR or MCOL (due to not getting a full refund)
- pursue the travel agent via MCOL under the Consumer Rights Act (on the basis that the contract is unfair and lopsided)
- ask your credit card company to intervene under the Consumer Credit Act.
Personally I'd be inclined to start with the credit card, it's likely to be the fastest. You paid for something and for reasons outside your control you didn't get it. The TA would have received a full refund from BA.

serfty

No one is going to want to read that - it's a big glob of text making it really really hard to read. For many it is easier to skip it and move on to the next post or thread.

However, I will reformat it for you and the benefit of others as it has an interesting process/result:
Good outcome.

LCSinTexas

Can anyone advise the reason for the delay on BA193 LHR-DFW 15March?

Thank you

LcS

corporate-wage-slave

It was certainly a bit of a mess, it was supposed to depart at 15:45 but I don't know what happened here:

Steviemac

Las Vegas flights now seem to be stopping via SFO outbound for Corona virus screening / clearance as LAS doesn’t have the facilities. Operational reasons cited but as this is a preplanned operation (Happened to the 275 last night) and no change was made to the timetable it is technically a delay to the published schedule. With the LGW flight now sitting with a 4/5 hr delay do you think an EU261 claim might be reasonable ?

KARFA

for compensation? really?

Finkface

Where is the “dislike” button? This is a new low even for our compensation-mad culture.

Hawk777

BA2277 LGW-LAS



Diverted to SFO, due to customer illness on board, clearance required by senior official.



Plan is to disembark call customers and go through screening and than fuel and go depending on crew limitations.



They done the screening due to having to stop due to illness on board

KARFA

apologies for the blunt reply, and thank you for the details Hawk777

trickartt

Hello FlyerTalkers

A little follow-up PSA here:

I received my final decision from CEDR a couple of weeks ago for my EC261 claim, regarding a flight delayed by 22 hours due to pilot sickness.

The final decision has gone against me, and in BA’s favour.

I’m pretty puzzled by this outcome, particularly after another kind FlyerTalker provided me with their CEDR final decision that went in their favour, in a similar circumstance. I was putting forward the argument that staff sickness is inherent and not extraordinary, and the adjudicator didn’t even consider that argument.

BA put together a shoddily copied-and-pasted (switching halfway through to refer to an airport unrelated to my case) argument, citing unspecified ‘data protection laws’ for not specifying what the pilot’s sickness was.

Paraphrasing the adjudicator’s final decision decision, it came down to ‘on the balance of probability, if the pilot was too sick to fly the plane, then the pilot must’ve been seriously ill’. I would’ve thought it would be BA’s burden to prove the pilot was ‘seriously ill’, given that is the CAA’s description of an extraordinary circumstance, but apparently not saying anything was good enough to win in CEDR!

The silly thing is if I was told straight at the beginning that the flight was delayed because the pilot got suddenly sick, I wouldn’t have thought twice about EC261 and got on with my life. Instead I was first told that BA ‘decided to’ delay my flight, which set me off down the whole EC261 rabbit hole in the first place. It was only when BA changed their argument to this, and I learned that crew sickness is such a legal grey area, that I decided to pursue it. The whole experience has felt a bit Kafkaesque!

So advice to anyone else in the future who might find themselves considering an EC261 case for a sick pilot: If you really want to pursue it, don’t go down the CEDR route!