erikh94

I'm once again turning to FT for compensation suggestion. I've just had two flights delayed by roughly fours hours. They were BA2576 LGW->TRN on 8 March and back on BA2579 on 9 March. The outbound was particularly egregious, with the plane boarded and stuck at the gate for just short of 5 hours in total. I have claimed compensation for both fully expecting to be rejected due to the French ATC strike.

The inbound I have very little hopes about, however I think there is ground for the claim about the outbound flight, as we were initially given a slot restriction but we subsequently missed the assigned slot for de-icing. The de-icing operation finished 3h5'after the departure time, and then we were given further ATC restriction. Am I right in assuming that BA should be held accountable for that amount of delay? My reasoning would be that the initial slot restriction is irrelevant to the delay as it was missed due to BA ground operations (or their subsidiary at LGW), and any further ATC restriction added to the delay.

I have never encountered a situation like this and I know there must be accountability for the different causes of the delay. Any suggestions would be very welcome. Also, if anyone can check the delay codes, it would be most helpful!

corporate-wage-slave

I think this is covered in the main EC261 thread and you'll forgive me for not repeating everything all over again here. But the straightforward test here is "is the delay caused by inherent airline activity?" - de-icing is a yes, ATC is a no. Secondly "were all reasonable measures taken to avoid significant delay". And you can perhaps split up the timing accordingly. BA are unlikely to pay, so CEDR is your better chance.

erikh94

Very much along the lines of what I was thinking, thanks CWS. I guess one other point I would need to look into is that the 3h5' delay was on departure, so the difference between block time and flight time would be claimable back by BA? I guess it's one of those aspects too specific and need to be evaluated case-by-case.
Thanks again!

bisonrav

It�s doors open time that sets the entitlement, and quite frequently the time is made up a little. So if you didn�t have doors open more than 3hrs after STA you have no claim

erikh94

We did got delayed by more than 4h, the key thing is whether 3h of that could be attributable to BA. They definitely were at departure, but I'm not sure I would calculate how those 3 hours got propagated at arrival

bisonrav

It�s doors open time that sets the entitlement, and quite frequently the time is made up a little. So if you didn�t have doors open more than 3hrs after STA you have no claim

dnw

I wouldn�t waste your time with a claim. I took the same aircraft that operated the earlier TRN inbound onwards to PMI yesterday and almost every short haul from LGW at the time was delayed due to the French general strikes and limited ATC slots through Fench airspace. In my case fortunately less than an hour on arrival.

This is completely outside of BA�s control.

Sigwx

I can�t check your outbound as it�s too late now, but given the weather it will be a combo of ATC strike delays, delays for de-icing, leading to needing a new CTOT and subsequent ATC strike related delay. Whilst de-icing availability is in the control of BA should they choose to have their own rigs, there is the added complication of the continuous rain which dilutes and washes off the protecting fluid, leading to a further spray being needed if fresh contamination on the wing is likely or confirmed to be present. As such timing is allegedly co-ordinated to be as close to the expected start up time as possible. The lack of resource to achieve this is however a BA issue, but in fairness it�s a very difficult weather scenario given the ATC delays that this all has to be co-ordinated against. Of note other airlines were equally affected.

The return on G-GATL is a knock on effect of ATC delays, plus some �mega stand congestion� (an actual quote). Your aircraft operated LGW-LPA-LGW-TRN-LGW. LGW-LPA arrived 43 mins late due to ATC delays, then picked up a subsequent delay of 104 mins on top on the LPA-LGW, again due to ATC. This significant delay back into LGW knocked onto the LGW-TRN along with some stand congestion too, that is in GAL�s remit as they allocate stands and operate the airport, but frankly the 2 hour mark had already been breached significantly by ATC delays. The final sector (yours) TRN-LGW was then all reactionary, no new factors apart from one minute for flight plans being updated, but frankly irrelevant as the rest for extraordinary circumstances has already been met. There may be some sort of avios offered as recompense given two in a row on subsequent days were significantly delayed, but if there was any chance at all, it would on an outside chance be the outbound flight you took, but not the inbound. Again, given the conditions it would be an easy one for BA due to the background of changing delays due to french ATC industrial action and the subsequent juggling act of allocating de-icing resource which affected all operators it seems that day.

As an aside it does seem that de-icing provision at LGW is somewhat lacking in availability, strength and breadth.

flarmip

Fail to see how the delays on the LGW-LPA-LGW rotation are relevant to the OP's flight? Appreciate that BA may well seek to make the argument about it not being reasonable for them to have spare aircraft at outstations such as TRN but the same argument clearly can't be made regarding LGW.

KARFA

It seems highly relevant.

What's your opinion on whether the reason for the delay relates to extraordinary circumstances, and whether it could have been avoided with reasonable measures?

flarmip

Can't comment on the extraordinary circumstances but what I'm getting at is that reactionary delays across a main base imply that "reasonable measures", such as changing allocations or using standby aircraft, were not used. Or in other words, the fact that BA schedules its aircraft intensively, and without sufficient slack to catch up reactionary delays such as these, is not extraordinary circumstances in any of itself.
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KARFA

ATC strikes that day would have affected any routes which went to destinations in France, or anything going to places nearby - so Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, Portugal, southern Germany etc. That's quite a lot of destinations affected, and quite a lot of reserve aircraft you are expecting an airline to have, not that a LGW-TRN flight with fresh crew and equipment with no previous delays wouldn't clearly have been delayed anyway. That would have required quite a lot of reasonable measures.

flarmip

That's true of course, but it's ultimately BA's decision to operate in this way. If the previous working had been a domestic, or to Iceland/Ireland/Denmark etc. then it would not have been delayed.
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Delayed, yes. Over 3 hours? Questionable.

Perhaps so. But I see no harm in challenging BA on the reasonable measures they applied. The worst outcome that can happen is that you ultimately just don't get the compensation; equally, it's possible you'll get it.

KARFA

Perhaps. But I don't see much point throwing in claims all the time in case one sticks on cases where there is a low/no risk of winning. However, perhaps others have more time on their hands to pursue these things almost as a hobby.

flarmip

Yes, ultimately I suppose it is a question of how you value your time. Given the amount of time most of us spend posting on fora such as these, I daresay most of us do have the time to pursue such claims. Obviously not everyone will be in that position.