Claiming for a cancelled flight on BA.com.
 

I was unfortunate to be on BA 820 last Saturday (16 June), after a lot of mess [could write a book on what went wrong] the whole flight was rebooked onto SAS (scheduled to leave 2:55 but left 4:05 later).

BA in no uncertain terms said that the reason for cancellation was due to crew shortage.

However when trying to claim compensation on BA.com it gives me the following message:

I guess this is a nice way to say, because there were clouds in the sky that made it convenient for us to cancel your flight even though we didn't have staff.

On a related note does anyone know what, if anything, the BA Amex (normal one) would cover. Having phoned up Amex yielded speaking to someone utterly clueless.

Have to say my esteem of BA and Amex after this trip have gone down the drain.

I think thats its because the crew shortage was caused by the storms across Europe a couple of days ago. Many crews were worked to their legal limits and this meant some flights that they had covered with crews had to be cancelled as those crew were no longer able to cover them. All standby crews were used up too.

The basic reason given is correct, but there is of course a bigger situation behind that reason.

I can confirm what adrianjc32 is saying. I was on the BA887 from Bucharest on Friday. Initially thunderstorms at Heathrow led to Heathrow ATC denying us the right to take of from OTP. Then a technical fault followed by thunderstorms at Bucharest resulted in a delay of more than 6 hours - this after we boarded and deplaned twice. :( The flight had to be canceled as crew would have been out of hours.
Luckily I got booked on the first flight out the next morning but I lost 17 hours of my first weekend at home in 6 months (had to fly back on Monday).

Local groundstaff did a heroic job in sorting out hotel rooms and trying to rebook everyone ^
I do not expect compensation.

On a side note - OTP flights are rammed full and a third daily flight is probably called for. Friday saw 10 full rows of club (50 pax), with 8 full rows on the return yesterday.

I am just filling out a claim form via Amex Plat for my 20 hour delay. Eventually left on same flight next day.

Though in the blurb it says you can claim for essential travel (eg cabs), hotel accommodation, meals and refreshments they only give the option of claiming for meals and hotels on the claim form.

It is all run by AXA. Try calling 0870 600 0342.

A delay or cancellation only allows £150 for accomm and food, basically, even though I was separated from my bags for nearly a whole day. The real gravy train is when your bags are late arriving at your holiday destination (no claims if you are arriving home...).