Ba delayed flight, lost holiday time

ANGUZ

We were to travel from Newcastle to Heathrow, 11.55 am then onto Vegas as 16.15, the flight from Newcastle was nearly 5 hours late taking off because firstly, the Captain had flew late the previous night, then they never had enough crew per passenger, so they took 39 people off the flight and gave them £200, then after we had sat on the tarmac for an hour and a half several of these passengers we re boarded.
The staff were not very helpfull either giving false or no information, oh just rush to flight connections, obviously the flights had gone, they put us up in a hotel and flew us the following day.
As a result of this we lost a day of our precious holiday which we had saved for nearly two years, Ba refuse to pay for any out of pocket expences, the cost of the hotel room for the night we lost in Vegas, or anything for the lost holiday time.
They say they dont pay cash compensation, company policy, and have offered as a gesture avios points, which i told them i will never use BA again.
Do I have a case for compensation ?

callum9999

ANGUZ wrote: »

We were to travel from Newcastle to Heathrow, 11.55 am then onto Vegas as 16.15, the flight from Newcastle was nearly 5 hours late taking off because firstly, the Captain had flew late the previous night, then they never had enough crew per passenger, so they took 39 people off the flight and gave them £200, then after we had sat on the tarmac for an hour and a half several of these passengers we re boarded.
The staff were not very helpfull either giving false or no information, oh just rush to flight connections, obviously the flights had gone, they put us up in a hotel and flew us the following day.
As a result of this we lost a day of our precious holiday which we had saved for nearly two years, Ba refuse to pay for any out of pocket expences, the cost of the hotel room for the night we lost in Vegas, or anything for the lost holiday time.
They say they dont pay cash compensation, company policy, and have offered as a gesture avios points, which i told them i will never use BA again.
Do I have a case for compensation ?

You do have a case for compensation - don't know the exact procedure off the top of my head but it's an incredibly well known EU regulation, you should be able to find it with ease.

As to the avios points, even if you decide to boycott BA (not particularly rational in my view, but understandable), you can spend them on other airlines like AA, Qantas, Iberia (though they are in the same group, don't know if your boycott extends to them as well!) etc.

ANGUZ

Is this It ... EU Regulation 261/2004

I spent over an hour on the phone today with the Ba Cus Service rep, after i had waited 6 weeks since I submitted the complaint and calim, they basicaly dont want to know.

Im disabled, got injured at the airport in the mad scramble to get to flight connections

They told me to claim for out of pocket expences on my insurence, which had a big excess, and dont seem to think they did anything wrong.

jpsartre

Yes, that's the regulation. It sounds as if some passengers were denied boarding due to crew shortage and received the appropriate cash compensation (£200). Were you one of them? If not, what you experienced was technically a delay as far as I can tell, in which case no compensation is due since this applies only to cases of cancelations/denied boarding (though that may change in the future).

BA are correct that they are not responsible out of pocket expenses such as a lost night at a hotel.

Getting injured at the airport is an entirely different issue and I'm not sure from your story why you feel that was BA's fault.

Voyager2002

Were you one of the people taken off the aeroplane? If so you were denied boarding, but the appropriate compensation is not 200 pounds but 600 Euro since you were going to Vegas.

BA are obliged to provide "care" during the delay and so you can claim the cost of limited telephone calls, food and drink against receipts. I assume that they paid for the hotel near Heathrow but have no liability for the wasted hotel stay in Vegas.

As for the injury at Heathrow: in order to make a claim you would need to be able to put a cash value on it, and you would need to demonstrate that the airline (or some other actor) was responsible, perhaps by failing in a duty of care?

System

Voyager2002 wrote: »

Were you one of the people taken off the aeroplane? If so you were denied boarding, but the appropriate compensation is not 200 pounds but 600 Euro since you were going to Vegas.

The flight that was delayed was Newcastle to Heathrow, not Vegas

Voyager2002

!!!!!! wrote: »

The flight that was delayed was Newcastle to Heathrow, not Vegas

I know, but since the OP held a ticket to Vegas the appropriate amount of compensation is for a long-haul journey.

jpsartre

But if the OP was denied boarding on the domestic part and missed his long haul connection as a result, the appropriate compensation is arguably 600 euro. Having read the first post again, however, it seems pretty clear that the OP was not among the people denied boarding so I guess it doesn't really matter.

stoneman

OP,
I am assuming that all of this was booked with BA on one ticket. As far as I can see you are entitled to 250 euros each compensation for the 5 hour delay NCL-LHR. You received care while at Heathrow by BA until the flight the next day, IE, food and hotel. You are not entitled to any other "compensation" because of lost nights in Vegas.
Now there might be that because this was a "through" ticket the first delay impacted on the next flight so the delay was for the longer distance as that was the final destination on the ticket, so you might be entitled to 600 euros instead of 250.

mynameistallulah

Have you asked BA for the official reason for the delay? I am surprised that they would have staffing issues at NCL.

ANGUZ

No we wernt taken off the plane, all the long haul passengers were told to wait to one side while they got voulenters to leave the flight, which they did, offering them £200. they told us not to worry we would all make out connecting flights

Then we boarded, and sat on the tarmac for nearly 2 hours while they re boarded several people who had left to get the compo over an hour before, (I recogonised at least 4 or 5 that had got up to voulenteer cause we all clapped them as It meant we could then take off) thus delaying us further, so we didnt take off till nearly 5pm nearly 5 hours late, missing the 4 15 connecting flight.


We were told to rush to flight connections when we got to Heathrow, they must have known the plane would have left, Ive never flown on a connecting flight before so I didnt know what the procedure Is, all their staff were hopeless and gave us little or no Information, we go no customer care whatsoever.

The atmosphere on that flight was terrible, how knowone lost It ill never know, at London they tried to say It was a mechanical fault, rubbish.

The whole holiday was booked as a package through Thomas Cook, with Netflights providing the flights and hotels, we just paid T Cook for the whole pacakage.

As I said In first post, the original delay was the Captain had flown late the night before, (this must have been know then, but nothing changed on flight board till 5 mins before we were due to board) then they didnt have enough staff per passengers, the Captain came on pa first, then as the atmosphere got worse In the departure lounge he came in and went through it all again on the mic in there, then It took them over 3 hours to sort It out.