MSE News: BA technical glitch leads to lengthy flight delays – claim £100s in compo

Legacy_user

If you've been affected by today's BA IT glitch, which sparked lengthy delays, you may be able to claim £100s in compo...

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'BA technical glitch leads to lengthy flight delays – claim £100s in compo for free'

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Alice_Walker

Link doesn't work.

Looking at flightstats most delays were less than two hours, so I'm not sure where the lengthy delays have come from. The worst affected seems to be Vancouver, that was around four hours so would qualify for "compo"*.

* Are we incapable of using the full word?

agarnett

I tend to agree with Alice Walker about the use of the urban dictionary word "compo" in a media reporting environment. Let's not pander to the lowest common denominator in the readership!

However, on the question of compensation, which I am sure that City Financiers and others will be demanding in ways only they can for the five or six hours closure at London City this morning, I was curious as to whether normal delay and cancellation compensation would be denied on grounds that the breach of security was outside airport and airline's control.

BA's aircraft sitting overnight at LCY are almost as equally vulnerable to security breach as the runway was - should it not also be the airline's responsibility for ensuring that security strategy is "joined up" such that security at the airports they choose to park overnight cannot be breached in such a way that they can't fly in the morning?

Would the LCY incident be looked upon as a totally unforeseen and uncontrollable incident so be exempt from compensation rules?

And would a systems "hack" really be a good enough reason for BA to avoid having to compensate according to the normal rules for their "IT glitch"?

richardw

agarnett wrote: »

..... the breach of security was outside airport ...control..

It's the airport's responsibility to secure their airport, wholly their responsibility for inadequate security. Totally ludicrous that this should have happened. BA and the other airlines should be livid.

Justice13075

Isn't this thread about BA problems with computers and not the problems at London City Airport.

agarnett

No Justice, read the introduction!

It's about compo compo compo and the ease or otherwise (e.g. hurdles that people might have to traverse) in getting it if they suffered delays due to the BA IT glitch!

The main article talks about the hypothetical instance of a "hack" causing the IT glitch as an example of how BA customers might be denied compensation. Personally I don't think that sounds like a possibility and even if it was, I am not sure BA could escape liability.

LCY is very much a BA airport thesedays (their premier service to New York included) so I thought it would be interesting to contrast and maybe even to combine the two events - I have no doubt some of BA's customers will have suffered a double whammy earlier today

Justice13075

This is the Introduction
"If you've been affected by today's BA IT glitch, which sparked lengthy delays, you may be able to claim £100s in compo"...

That is the headline what has that to do with the protest at London City Airport?????????????????????????????????????? It is about the computer problems not the protests

Vauban

I hate the word "compo"; it's lazy and crass. And wasn't he a character in Last of the Summer Wine?

agarnett

Justice13075 wrote: »

This is the Introduction
"If you've been affected by today's BA IT glitch, which sparked lengthy delays, you may be able to claim £100s in compo"...

That is the headline what has that to do with the protest at London City Airport?????????????????????????????????????? It is about the computer problems not the protests

Listen carefully, as I shall say thees only wernce:

That is indeed the headline but the principle assertion within it is the possibility of the £100s in compo which is itself not an assertion based on BA IT glitches today last week next week nor 5 years ago but on European Law relating to delayed flights for almost any reason.

BA's IT glitch is merely a potential trigger to release the flow of possible compensation for a particular group of unfortunate travellers today.

Potential hacks to BA's computer system were ventured in MSE's original article but no-one is saying that happened either, but it is still worth comparing and contrasting for analysis purposes, just as it is worth contrasting comparing and even combining the double whammy in which BA's London City Airport customers (a subgroup of unfortunates whose number include some of BA's most valued transatlantic clientele who were delayed anyway on Tuesday morning primarily by something other than the computer glitch) would be more or less successful in claiming compensation because of existence of that second incident, than they might be through claiming because of the BA computer glitch alone.

For example, lets say there were a whole bunch of BA customers arriving for a quick check-in followed by a lazy breakfast upstairs at LCY at 5am this morning who were unable to check-in as expected because of the computer glitch.

They were perhaps queuing to have handwritten boarding passes issued and handwritten baggage tags applied to their bags. Maybe someone even told them that their flights could possibly be delayed because of the computer glitch. Meantime, the mist out on the runway cleared at about 6am and someone rubbed their eyes in the control tower and said "What's that up the other end of the runway?"

By 7am by which time the airport is usually receiving and dispatching flights, it actually wasn't. By 8am probably all the handwritten boarding cards were written and those delayed by the IT glitch were having their breakfast airside and ready to fly with their handwritten boarding passes, wondering what else was going on exactly.

By 9am the continuing delays were hardly anything to do with the computer glitch any longer and when the airport finally opened to traffic again at 1pm, the delays and cancellations clearly had nothing to do with the computer glitch, and the actual reason was arguably completely out of BA's control so no compensation was owed by them perhaps?

It's a fair discussion question as to whether LCY BA customers this morning are looking at higher compensation because the protest exacerbated their problems even beyond that caused by the computer glitch causing potential 5 or 6 hour delays instead of lesser delays at other airports, or whether indeed entitlement to compensation from the airline was eliminated completely because their delay turned out to be completely outside BA's control.

Have you got it now? The world is not one dimensional nor even 2D. Everything connects with something else, sometimes in a good way, sometimes in interesting ways which we can discuss like adults (unless that is we close our minds to it for unclear reasons!)

I don't want to put words in your mouth, but you could of course prejudge this part of the discussion in order to kill it dead, by arguing that anyone affected by both the IT glitch and the protest must disregard the computer glitch and claim their compensation on the strength of the delays caused by the protesters whose "success" trumped the effects of the glitch. Or maybe you already did.

Over to you, ... er ... judge.

Justice13075

Right so you agree with me that I am right but now you try and muddy the water by including an insertion. This thread is about the IT glitch it is quite clear form the the headline. if you want to talk abut anything else start a new thread otherwise valid points get lost in the within the body of the thread and are harder to find.

victor2

Justice13075 wrote: »

This is the Introduction
"If you've been affected by today's BA IT glitch, which sparked lengthy delays, you may be able to claim £100s in compo"...

That is the headline what has that to do with the protest at London City Airport?????????????????????????????????????? It is about the computer problems not the protests

Agree it's nothing to do with the protest at LCY.
That headline does seem to illustrate how we are following the US in becoming a compensation society. And the admirable Compo was in Last of The Summer Wine. He'd sort out the IT glitch in no time.