Flight delay and cancellation compensation, BA ONLY

Scruffywuffy

SirGimpy wrote: »

And I stand by mine. If you argue with an airline about whether a bird strike is extraordinary, the passenger will sometimes win. More often than not, the airline will win. Up to you whether you want to take the risk.

I won ! Our flight was delayed 9hours for 3 separate reasons, it took Thomsons 3 Dreamliner planes to find one that we could fly on (by then the crew were out of hours!) but the reason they gave me for rejecting my claim was birdstrike - they failed to engage through the whole process resulting in me issuing a claim which they acknowledged and said they intended to defend, then called me around a week later to settle.


Now I never found out what the problem with the 2nd Dreamliner they flew in for us was, so it could have been that was a legitimate claim or the fact that they said the birdstrike had occurred during the plane's previous rotation, so I also argued knock-on, but they stuck with the problem to the first - which was birdstrike, perhaps hoping I'd give up and think birdstrike was an extraordinary circumstance. But I didn't ...

Tyzap

Well done.

You have proved, yet again, that you have to stick to your guns to enjoy that winning feeling.

111KAB

Well done Scruffy ...... perhaps SirGimpy will send you a bottle of bubbly so you can celebrate.

Geoggy

Following the MSE email about claiming back to 2005, I claimed via resolver for a flight in February 2008.

BA have replied refusing it because it is more than 6 years old;

"EC Regulation 261/2004 was established on 17 February 2005, however the time limit in which court claims can be pursued is in line with domestic law. For the UK the time limit is six years, which is confirmed in the Limitation Act 1980 and is based on contract or as a result of an enactment. You may want to refer to sections 5 and 9 of the Limitations Act 1980 if you’d like more information about this"

Can I take this any further?

Vauban

No - BA are right. You are out of time. The MSE advice on this is hopeless. I am not aware of a single airline that pays claims arising more than six years ago.

SirGimpy

111KAB wrote: »

Well done Scruffy ...... perhaps SirGimpy will send you a bottle of bubbly so you can celebrate.

I don't just make these things up, you know. The highest court in Germany has concluded that bird strikes are extraordinary. The courts in the Netherlands have reached the opposite conclusion. In England, there is no binding authority. The non-binding decisions at County Court level are a picture of inconsistency but judgments that bird strikes are not extraordinary are still relatively few and far between (despite Bott pretending that Ash v. Thomas Cook was the final say in the matter).

Caz3121

Vauban wrote: »

No - BA are right. You are out of time. The MSE advice on this is hopeless. I am not aware of a single airline that pays claims arising more than six years ago.

I think this is because it is an EU ruling and the time limits vary within the EU. Is there not a country where you have 10 years to claim? (but obviously not relevant for a UK claim which is indeed too late)

Vauban

Caz3121 wrote: »

I think this is because it is an EU ruling and the time limits vary within the EU. Is there not a country where you have 10 years to claim? (but obviously not relevant for a UK claim which is indeed too late)

Spain, I think, allows for up to 10 years.

But I have heard Martin Lewis himself say, on TV, that claiming after six years isn't impossible but "just a bit more difficult". Difficult as in swimming to the moon difficult.

Vauban

SirGimpy wrote: »

I don't just make these things up, you know.

Indeed. But I suspect that the direction of travel on all this will be that bird strikes are not extraordinary. Both the UK and European courts have recently stressed the "inherence" test originally articulated in Wallentin, and have correspondingly played down the notion of "control" as a determining factor. So if it's not an abnormal occurrence, it ain't extraordinary.

Regardless, you will presumably wish to congratulate Scruffy on his fine win?

EDIT: I think I have confused things with my abnormal comment. For clarity I mean an event which could reasonably be expected to happen at some point in the course of running an airline.

SirGimpy

I think your edit has rather nicely highlighted why the 'inherency' limb of the test is so problematic. Where is the line to be drawn between what occurs in the normal exercise of the activity of an air carrier and what does not? Between what is normal and abnormal? Hijackings are not unheard of, but does that mean that it is not an extraordinary event? If a hijacking is not extraordinary then what is? Can a bird strike not properly be described as abnormal? What about a lightning strike? What is the difference between all these events?

You may well be right about the direction of travel on bird strikes, although I doubt it will ever reach an appeal court in England and Wales. The airlines have woken up to the dangers of having binding decisions. They would rather take their chances with different district judges.

An interesting point to note is that the European Commission and the European Parliament always intended the test to be whether the event was within the control of the carrier. That much is clear from the documents which were produced during the negotiations over the Regulation. Why no one has ever bothered to point this out to the European Court is baffling. It will be interesting to see what line the new regulation takes when it is finalised. The current draft seems to place the emphasis back on control rather than inherency.

And to answer your final point, yes I shall congratulate him in the hope that the moderators will refrain from deleting any more of my posts for 'not being nice to moneysavers'.