Crew needing rest causes delay in flight. NO COMPENSATION
 

British airways delayed my flight for over 6 hours due to fact that their crew need sufficient time to recover for a disturbance to their sleep. I applied for compensation and their reply to me was as follows....

"The crew scheduled to operate your flight had their rest disturbed due to an incident at their hotel on the night of 22nd February. The safety of our customers and crew is always our top priority so it was decided to allow them sufficient rest before flying back to London. As Berlin is not one of our main hubs, where standby crew are available, this meant we had no other option but to delay your flight. "

I understand that if there is a problem with the plane that the safety of staff and customers are paramount, but has anyone else had a poor excuse for being delayed for over 6 hours and refused compensation ?

I had a similar "crew rest" delay on AY - went to small claims after they had rejected my claim. Won, Keep pushing! :)

It's difficult to argue with this reply to be honest, there is a legal requirement for crew rest, it was not caused by (for example) a delay in the incoming flight due to a tech delay, and the incident that disturbed the rest was presumably outside BA's control.

BA are just hedging their bets you won't pursue further.

BA run up to 12 services a day to Berlin from the UK. If that doesn't make it a commercially important destination for them, what does?

The paid out on lack of crew (in Italy) to me recently so I would pursue this

Seems like a common sense approach to the Regulation once one accepts that crew rest is mandated not only by law but by common sense.

Sneering at what is "commercially important" is of little value in the analysis.

Go ahead and pursue this through CEDR and perhaps MCOL if the former fail. If you have the time and inclination.

Welcome to FT TheRUMMAN!

There is a guide on the EU Regulation here which may be useful. https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...61-2004-a.html

Good point.

Was there no offer to rebook on another BA flight from TXL which would have reduced your delay getting in to London?

Sneering? Jeesh.

It’s not a “poor excuse”, it’s a reason.

Personally, I’m glad of this response, it demonstrates a safety culture.

Welcome to Flyertalk and welcome to the BA forum TheRUMMAN. I suspect you have a good case if you wanted to take it to CEDR I think you may well be successful, and you will find the main thread above. To my mind this has the hallmarks of being an "extraordinary circumstance" (sounds like the fire alarm was set off in the middle of the night) but there is always a rider on this: BA has to take all reasonable measures to avoid delay to you and I suspect you will be able to argue on multiple points that they didn't do this (replacement crew flown in, alternative BA services, alternative airline routing). I wouldn't argue the excuse was poor, it's actually the law and BA has no leeway when it comes to giving crew their statutory rest period.

I recall an early BA flight from Berlin on which the (young) cabin crew spent much of the flight talking about how they'd been up all night and had had no sleep. (And, to be honest, they looked it).

Clearly, lack of sleep is only a safety issue when it's involuntary.

I personally wouldn't file a claim for EC261 because I view this as an unforeseeable event outside BA's control (assuming there was an incident at or near the crew hotel that kept them awake or disturbed their rest) and the action was required to comply with legal rest requirement for crew as well as for crew well being and safety of everyone. My moral compass does not allow me to make a claim on that basis. I don't care how other people view it though.

While I'd agree it's outside of their control the counter arguement was whether such a delay was necessary or they could have reasonably shuttled another crew out from LHR within a shorter timescale.

I think I'd persue a bit further but wouldn't really go beyond a follow up with them.

At what time did the disturbance become evident and how quickly was it reported to BA's flight operations team?

At what time was the flight scheduled to depart?

Providing for reasonable shuffling at LON and then placement on an outbound flight, at what time were those services?

What were the other constraints on operations and their respective causes?

Those who think that it is easy to snap one's fingers and send a crew packing to perform a flight really ought to be sentenced to spend a week at a major carrier's operations center.

There are any number of flight crews where the Captain would have sloughed off a fire alarm in the night. One ought to be grateful that this Captain and BA did not. Quite EU-like to create a countervailing economic interest.