Flight delayed due to engine problems.
 

Hi all,
I am wondering if anyone could help at all. At my wits end with BA!
we flew on 6th October on a connecting flight from San Francisco to Heathrow. Was meant to take off at 7.25pm but didn’t end up taking off till 11.30pm. We were 4 hours delayed due to a problem with the breaking system. The pilot kept us informed the whole time and they had to call uk engineers as they couldn’t fix the issue. We were over the wing, we watched them trying to fix the engine. We spoke to the crew and they told us our flight had to go as the flight before got cancelled due to staff sickness. They said if we are 4.5 hours delayed the flight would be cancelled again. They managed to fix the problem and we took off 4 hours late. The pilot even announced that we could claim compensation and how to do it. We missed our second meal and only had one drink service (on a 10 hour flight!) due to crew needing to rest. I’ve complained to BA but the are refusing our claim, saying the flight was delayed due to staff sickness not engine failure! And we aren’t entitled to anything. I’m going back and forth with them, but it’s like talking to a robot. Does anyone know what we can do? Can I check their systems some other way? They have said they will not let us know the report for the flight as this might be needed for legal court cases?!
if anyone could help I would greatly appreciate it. I just don’t know why they have the reason wrong?

Check out this link :-

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/brit...61-2004-a.html

Basically, you'll need to go via CEDR or MoneyClaimOnline if BA are refusing to pay out. It depends on how late you were landing (and doors open).

Is this BA286 on October 6? If so, arrival was 3 hours 12 minutes late.
If this isn't your flight, if you can supply the flight number and date, someone may be able to look it up for you.


https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...f283d189d7.png

Thank you
 

thanks for your replies.
yes this looks like our flight. BA aren’t disputing the times they are saying it was staff sickness. Which it wasn’t, it was due to problems with the engine. BA are saying they don’t pay out for staff sickness! We were told repeatedly by the pilot and crew that it was the engine and we watched the engineers. It makes no sense to us.. is there anything we can do to dispute the reason?

See above. Just go via CEDR and state your case. It's up to BA to prove it was staff sickness rather than a technical issue. If it was staff sickness at SFO, where would they have got replacement staff from?

Moderator, pls move this to the BA forum.

thank you. Will do. On their web site it was we have to wait 8 week's though. Do we need to wait, or just start the process now?

You should give BA a final chance to respond (postively) to you claim before you commence CEDR

laura_d77 , welcome to Flyertalk.

Please follow the redirect as we move this to our BA form.

~beckoa, co-moderator Information Desk

Staff sickness has been proved many times in court as not an "extraordinary circumstance" which I suspect is what they are claiming.

Even down route?

I think BA would have trouble arguing that they don't have crew they can call upon at a major hub like LHR, definitely, but SFO has no resident crew does it?

Although of course that's not the point of this thread, so apologies for going OT.

The link to the main EC261 thread is upthread, and that will give you plenty of background to this area. But the short version is that you don't have to accept BA's version of events and that after 8 weeks from the initial complaint you can take the matter to CEDR. BA will then have to present the evidence from their side and the adjudicator will review this. From what I can make out you are eligible for 300€ / £260 per passenger for a delay in arrival of more than 3 hours, less than 4 hours. I would not advocate spending too long on trying to deal with BA, they do sometimes change their initial decision but so infrequently it's best to go off to CEDR as soon as you can.

You have two choices - either go to MCOL (Money Claim Online, a small claims court process), for which you'll need a physical UK address (you can 'borrow' one from a friend for correspondence, you don't have to actually live there).

Alternatively, you can use the dispute resolution service, CEDR. This will probably take longer to get a decision from.

In either case, to speed the process, formally write back to BA asking them to confirm that "this is their final offer and the decision will not change". That will allow you to either refer to CEDR immediately (free) or issue MCOL proceedings (a fee, which you recover if you win).

You should note that your delay compensation claim is based on arrival (doors open) time, not departure, and therefore you are working on a delay of 3h12m.

Some caution is therefore needed - if BA can show that staff sickness (or other causes generally held as extraordinary such as ATC/weather delays) took the delay below the 3 hour time limit for compensation, then they are correct and nothing is due. There are potentially other legal arguments here - if the staff sickness was in parallel with the maintenance, for example, BA couldn't claim that as they would not then have taken all reasonable measures to mitigate the crew issue when they had extra time to resolve it.

So, it may be a little more complicated than you think ...

It doesn't matter. My case was that almost in reverse, albeit with a different airline, with crew sickness affecting a United flight from LHR-SFO.

United used to have London based cabin crew, not sure if they still do or not.