Flight delay and cancellation compensation, BA ONLY

eskbanker

greenman123 said:

Hi, Looking for advice/clarification.  

I was flying Heathrow to Athens and on the morning of the flight, BA cancelled my flight.  They rebooked me onto a flight 2hours later, which was then delayed by over 1.5hours.  
I deem this to be over 3.5hours delay, and so expected full compensation.  However, BA are saying that as I accepted the rebooked flight, the delay is less than 2hours, and so I'm not entitled to the compensation.  

This can't be right, as it was on the day (less than 7days notice). But they have kept this position 3times now...
Any ideas on what I can do?

I think it comes down to interpretation - when cancelling a flight (not due to extraordinary circumstances), this triggers compensation unless passengers "are offered re-routing, allowing them to depart no more than one hour before the scheduled time of departure and to reach their final destination less than two hours after the scheduled time of arrival", so BA's interpretation of this is presumably that you were offered a flight scheduled to be arriving within two hours of original schedule.

The fact that it didn't actually arrive on schedule is presumably being considered as a separate matter, i.e. a delay of 1.5 hours, rather than measuring 3.5 hours against your original schedule.

There is some support for their line of argument in that if a flight is cancelled and a much later replacement flight is also delayed by more than three hours, this is counted as two separate compensation events, rather than one, so arguably this is consistent - I can't recall from previous threads whether or not their position is fully compliant with case law though, but if they've given their final response (I can't believe that they'll change now after saying this three times), you could always escalate to CEDR?

Edit: found a thread I was thinking of where this was discussed before, where I was exchanging opinions with another poster (I was starting from your interpretation), but without clear agreement about the definitive position:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6507230/final-destination

Caz3121

What were the reasons for the cancellation and delay?

mdann52

eskbanker said:

There is some support for their line of argument in that if a flight is cancelled and a much later replacement flight is also delayed by more than three hours, this is counted as two separate compensation events, rather than one, so arguably this is consistent - I can't recall from previous threads whether or not their position is fully compliant with case law though, but if they've given their final response (I can't believe that they'll change now after saying this three times), you could always escalate to CEDR?

From memory (I haven't read the judgement tonight...), A and Others v Finnair would apply here, which states that's it's the scheduled arrival time of the rerouted flight that matters, not the actual arrival time, when it comes to cancellation compensation for the original flight.

Samshine37

Hi guys im wondering if anyone can shed any light on this situation,

I had a flight booked through BA going to Abu Dhabi from Edinburgh through London Heathrow! The first flight was delayed and then delayed boarding, then there was issues with suitcases on the flight resulting in us not leaving the tarmac until 935pm resulting in me missing my connecting flight to Abu Dhabi with BA. I sent a claim form off for compensation as the next flight they put me on was not until 930am the following day from London to Abu Dhabi, when I originally should have arrived in Abu Dhabi at 830am.

They responded with a generic apology email, surely this is not acceptable and should be due to compensation since I didn't not arrive in any Dhabi until 730pm the following day, 11 hours after original landing time. Any help would be appreciated 👍

Caz3121

What was the reason given for the initial delay from Edinburgh? If Air Traffic, weather etc then there is no compensation due.
Did they provide you a hotel / meals in Heathrow - if not and you purchased these you can reclaim under Duty of Care irrespective of the reason for delay

Samshine37

Hey, they never actually gave us a reason for initial delay, but when we eventually boarded they told us they where missing two suitcases and then they had an extra one on the flight so didn't actually leave the tarmac until 935pm 

meanmum

Our BA flights from MAN to AMM were cancelled at short notice, and we were rerouted - arriving home over 20h later. BA have been cancelling all flights to Amman for the last few weeks. Are they likely to claim extraordinary circumstances even though the real reason is probably commercial due to very low seat sales? 

eskbanker

meanmum said:

Our BA flights from MAN to AMM were cancelled at short notice, and we were rerouted - arriving home over 20h later. BA have been cancelling all flights to Amman for the last few weeks. Are they likely to claim extraordinary circumstances even though the real reason is probably commercial due to very low seat sales? 

It'll all come down to what the real reason actually is - do you have anything authoritative and reliable to support your theory, and what have BA said in response to your claim?  I wouldn't have thought that they'd have too much difficulty citing proximity to a war zone as being extraordinary circumstances though....

spiralshape

spiralshape said:

TL;DR: BA cancelled our London-Basel flight the very morning that we were at Heathrow, told us they could fly us to Milan instead and refund our transfer to Basel if we arranged it ourselves, and now claim they don't have to pay those costs at all.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/80986420/#Comment_80986420

Update

After eight weeks passed since my initial complaint regarding this with no response or money from BA, I emailed again reiterating the claims which broke down into three parts: (i) Food, accommodation & transport at Heathrow, (ii) cost of transfer from Milan to Basel and (iii) 4 x compensation claims. On (ii) I reiterated that their customer services representative had told me we'd be reimbursed when offering us the Milan flight and I quoted Article 8 on top of that, giving them two weeks before I'd look into taking it to CEDR.

I got a reply the next day advising that they were "pleased" to say we were entitled to compensation (iii), and were "happy" to reimburse the (i) expenses that hadn't been paid before due to a "system issue". The transfer costs (ii) weren't mentioned at all.

I replied again with our stance on (ii) and our expectation of a response or we'd go to CEDR. Again no reply at all, while the money for (i) and (iii) came through a few days later.

Apart from their original reply over eight weeks ago claiming they were only legally responsible for the cost of the flight and not the transfer, they've refused to engage in any way regarding the transfer costs. I guess there's little point raising it again, so instead I take it to CEDR? What's the best way to go about this?

Thanks again in advance for any advice.

eskbanker

spiralshape said:
I guess there's little point raising it again, so instead I take it to CEDR? What's the best way to go about this?

https://www.cedr.com/consumer/aviation/make-a-complaint/