weero

Background:
- Friend from North America visits my past Wednesday in OSL. AA Biz award through LHR, LHR-OSL segment was on BA.
- The BA flight gets canceled and he gets rebooked onto a flight 707 4 hours later which the is an additional 2 hours delayed, making for a total delay of 6 hours.
- He also is downgraded to coach and no one at T3 can tell him why. BA claims weather when they deny comp but SK flew all contemporary schedules to OSL without issues.
- Luggage is delayed until today.

In my opinion:

• BA owes compensation for the delay, as the cancellation wasn't force majeure and they could have booked him onto one of the earlier SK services.
• The baggage issue will go nowhere in OSL.
• It will be hard to impossible to receive any extra for the downgrade, as it was an AA award ticket with no universally accepted metric for comp.

Does anyone have any relevant experience or insight?

corporate-wage-slave

I'm surprised they didn't notice the thick fog on Wednesday. See this thread from post 401, compensation won't be payable.

FAQ : Reason for flight delay or cancellation - 2024 edition

The downgrade on the other hand is reimbursable under Mennens - see the wiki of the main EC261 thread. It's BA's job to do this, but they may pass the matter on to AA due to it being reimbursement not compensation. However in law BA is responsible. I would do a calculation based on your best workings out of Mennens, ask AA to pay this but then pursue BA if this isn't paid.

Baggage is under Montréal rather than EC261, they can claim for any necessary expenditure for the delayed items.

weero

Thanks a lot .

I did ask him - his inbound flight incurred no delay and he didn't notice the fog. That is of course no hard evidence and weather might have been rough despite his perception.
But the SK flights around the same time window flew without issues - so how bad could it have been?
Lastly, BA made no effort to book him on one of 3 earlier flights - sure all with the competition - that would have arrived before the 4 hour delay window.

The downgrade looks like an uphill battle. I will try this first before attempting the delay claim.

revorgap

The weather caused reduced flow rates, so aircraft could still land and take off, but a reduced number of them.
Were there seats available on any of the 3 earlier flights?

weero

Yes, albeit only in higher revenue buckets.

At least when I checked which is just after he got the notice that his connection to OSL was canceled. That was before his AA flight touched down.

surryson

The arrival rate at LHR was dropped to 20/hr for a period, gradually then stepping up towards 30/hr.
Normally, the landing rate per hour is somewhere between 44-46, can’t quite remember the exact declared number. With these reduced flow rates, BA had to reduce their schedule.

navylad

Was this the 6th March?

I’m assuming you mean they were rebooked on BA770 rather than 707? If so, it is worth noting that it was due to depart at 1925 but didn’t depart until 2148. The delay total total was 5 hours 40.

i’m assuming SK802 and SK804 departed before their arrival.

SK806 departed 49 minutes late, arriving 15 minutes late. Not sure what time they landed from the US, but perhaps given it was due to depart 10 minutes after the original flight, it reasonable wasn’t thought feasible given the required terminal transfer at LHR?

SK810 departed 12 minutes late, but with a departure of 1730, would have been a reasonable alternative allowing time to transfer to a different terminal. What were the seats available?

SK812 departed in time at 1930, but I suspect that would not have been considered a reasonable alternative at the time of transferring them (assuming the delay to BA770 wasn’t known at the time).

it sounds like a case that could be argued not on the delay itself but on reasonable measures to reduce the delay but I suspect it will be one that BA would defend and you would likely need to go to CEDR and I wouldn’t put the chances of success too high; particularly if you don’t have evidence of availability on. SK810 (and considering how that held up with rebooking an entire cancelled plane, one might need available seats).

as an aside, if only high buckets in an alternative flight was available, it may be that no actual seats were available, but the airline, in this case SAS, was prepared to oversell on the flight on the assumption of no-shows but wouldn’t necessarily offer a seat to BA for IRROPS since there is a risk for them in doing so.

Personally, I would pursue the downgrade compensation only, given the fog was the root cause and people across airlines were doing their best to get people to their destinations with cancellations.

muzz09

I travel on this route very often and SAS tends to be more motivated to fly if they can whereas BA can cancel Oslo more easily presumably to prioritize other higher revenue/ long haul flights.
I haven’t had success in the past to make either BA or SAS book me with another airline when the route had disruption, so I have relied on travel insurance if I really need to travel and just buy another ticket myself.

SK AAR

If BA has a flight 3-4 hours later to OSL there is def. no obligation to rebook OAL/to SAS: This argument will lead nowhere.

For the downgrade LHR-OSL it will most likely be close to nothing based on the full itinerary, US-LHR-OSL; may not be worth the time and efforts.

weero

I have written to BA for comp and they have yet to come up with an offer. Will then use one of the air advocate services to handle the matter, The fact that SK flew all services and much on time give me hope that the cancellation was a choice of BA and not force majeure per se.

I am sorry not to have answered this properly. BA768 was the original service. My friend reached London at 2pm, so you are correct in all points.

SK 806, SK 810, SK 812 were the services that would have made it safely before the 4 hour delay mark.

I am no lawyer and I don't know what the term "obligation" encompasses. The fact remains that my friend was nearly 6 hours late due to two choices that BA made. One of them could perhaps be explained away. But I will argue that they took a gamble with the second one and it didn't work out.

I got comp in cases of fog before but only after using legal help. I don't expect BA to give in.

Tafflyer

Important advice here is to make a screenshot of other airline sites with seats in the required cabin for sale as well as explicitly asking BA to note in the PNR that it had been requested. Come CEDR that could tip it your way.

It often feels like BA is first to cancel in bad weather but London is often a more important route for many carriers whereas BA may well favour higher revenue routes over OSL.