Flight delay and cancellation compensation, Tui/Thomson ONLY

shibumi

Thanks for all those points. Would TUI have to disclose as much detail to ADR as a county court ? 

shibumi

I’ve had a quick look back at the ADR documents.  TUI did not mention the pilot illness but did blame airport staff shortage? They also omitted the refuel in Athens just cited the reason for diversion being the thunderstorms. So could  the court reasonably ask why they didn’t just hold off landing /circle until the thunderstorms passed ? 

I appreciate all your feedback
thank you

eskbanker

shibumi said:

Would TUI have to disclose as much detail to ADR as a county court ? 

shibumi said:

I’ve had a quick look back at the ADR documents.  TUI did not mention the pilot illness but did blame airport staff shortage?

It's up to the airline how much detail they provide to Aviation ADR and the court, but at each stage they should be trying to convince the arbiter/judge to side with them, so it's very much in their interests to include everything relevant all the way through.  To me they risk loss of credibility if they fail to mention something they later rely on, but if the pilot replacement only caused 40 minutes of delay then they're maybe focusing on what they contend to be the primary factor, i.e. the one that they're not held liable for, namely the weather.

shibumi said:

They also omitted the refuel in Athens just cited the reason for diversion being the thunderstorms. So could  the court reasonably ask why they didn’t just hold off landing /circle until the thunderstorms passed ?

Presumably TUI's case is that the diversion itself was enough to take the delay over the three hours - all airlines have to fuel planes with sufficient capacity to accommodate some holding as well as ultimately diverting, but obviously there are limits to realistically how long they can circle for, and diverting to Athens is about another hour's extra flying time, so if you wanted to make the case that they breached regulations or internal policies then this would need to be substantiated, as would any assertion that they should have waited for better weather (do you know long it took for the storms to pass?).  As mentioned earlier, decisions to divert will generally be taken very reluctantly as a last resort, so I'd fully expect them to be able to justify it without much difficulty....

shibumi

thank you for your help 

shibumi

I don’t feel I can access anything tangible to my evidence bundle other than the newspaper articles. I assume (rightly or wrongly? ) that it will be up to judge to delve beyond TUIs defence to unearth any grey areas? Hence my original query about a skeleton argument. 

Thanks

eskbanker

shibumi said:

I don’t feel I can access anything tangible to my evidence bundle other than the newspaper articles. I assume (rightly or wrongly? ) that it will be up to judge to delve beyond TUIs defence to unearth any grey areas? Hence my original query about a skeleton argument. 

Thanks

My understanding is that it's up to you to do the delving and unearthing, and the judge then simply decides whether you or TUI are more credible, so if TUI have said things that you believe are untrue or invalid then the onus is on you to disprove, or at least challenge, them - bear in mind that you're the one bringing the action so it's on you to make your case, not the judge.

As mentioned earlier, I'm not aware of any 'skeleton arguments' but would question their usefulness as the key issues will differ in each case.  Having said that, it's definitely worth having some sort of structure, so in your shoes I'd go for something like:

1. Establish agreed facts of case (actual arrival times versus schedule, etc)
2. For each factor cited by TUI as contributing to the delay, identify reasons why you feel they're not extraordinary circumstances within the context of the regulations
3. For each of these, examine the extent to which they could have been avoided by reasonable measures
4. If there were unavoidable extraordinary circumstances affecting the previous flight, is this enough to negate liability to pay compensation for the knock-on delay to the next flight?

Personally I don't see anything of value in that newspaper article, which seemed to be mainly moans about lack of in-flight catering rather than actually evidencing anything (assuming there's no significant dispute about the facts), so previous legal cases and the like will be far more valuable where they're directly relevant.

shibumi

Thank you Eskbanker 
The press  article does quote a TUI spokesperson admitting the pilot swap giving way to the initial delay and that the diversion was also to refuel. Neither of which appeared in the TUIs ADR defence interestingly. 

I will take your advice and prepare as above for the actual hearing.  

Thanks again 

eskbanker

shibumi said:

The press  article does quote a TUI spokesperson admitting the pilot swap giving way to the initial delay and that the diversion was also to refuel. Neither of which appeared in the TUIs ADR defence interestingly. 

I will take your advice and prepare as above for the actual hearing.  

The implication from the Mirror article is that there was a four hour delay, of which 40 minutes were caused by having to replace the unwell pilot and the rest (implicitly) by the bad weather diversion, so there doesn't seem to be much mileage in discussing the former if the latter qualify as extraordinary circumstances and constituted the bulk of the delay.

Personally I don't see the diversion as being some sort of smoking gun signifying fault and liability, unless there's any evidence that the aircraft was fuelled unreasonably short?  There was obviously some holding prior to taking the decision to divert ("the plane almost reached Corfu and started circling round and round, before heading to Athens") so there was evidently enough fuel for both holding for a while and also to then fly to an airport on the mainland, which would be as expected, so I can see why the airline would portray the situation as diverting because of bad weather rather than because of insufficient fuel as such, as they're effectively two sides of the same coin.

shibumi

Thank you 

shibumi

I have since found some screenshots of arrivals and departures in Corfu that day.  All other flights landed and took off after average delays of 35 mins. (Around the same times as the previous TUI flight was scheduled to arrive and depart) No other diversions.