BA missed connection - can we claim?

rocky1man

We booked a trip to New York through Ebookers, flying from Newcastle-Heathrow-JFK and the same in reverse, but due to a missed connection on the return journey, we arrived home over 16 hours later than planned - is this something we can claim for?.
The details are: our return flight from JFK left on schedule but arrived 20 mins late and resulted in us missing the connection to Newcastle, which was the last flight of the day and left us with an extremely upset child!
BA couldn't rebook us for the next day at the time so put us up in a hotel and told us to return at 6.30am when they would be in a better position to try and get us on another flight.
On arriving at 6.30am we were told that they could not get us on the first flight (8.40am) and would struggle to get us on any flight that day. They did offer to fly us to Leeds/Bradford and said it would be up to us from there to get ourselves home - we kindly declined their offer.
After pushing further, they managed to get us on the 13.30 flight and so we finally arrived back in Newcastle at 14.45, over 16 hours later than planned.
The expected time gap for the connection was 1hr 10mins and although all flights were on one booking, at no time were we told this was too tight and could have this result.
The cabin crew were aware of the situation and there were 2 other parties in the same situation. In fact the air hostess advised that they had spoken to the ground team and we would be met and rushed through, although no one did meet us and we had to race through the airport.
Any advice would be welcome.

richardw

BA should not have ticketed such a daft itinerary.

Caz3121

minimum connection T5 to T5 is 60 mins so this was a valid connection. As found this also has no contingency and a short delay messes things up.
I suspect there is no compensation due. The flight left on schedule and was likely impacted by either weather or ATC (many times spent in a holding pattern!) Unless you know that the delay was within the control of the airline there is no claim
Your hotel accommodation and refreshments during the delay are covered under duty of care so if you spent out you should send copies of receipts for reimbursement

rocky1man

Caz3121 wrote: »

minimum connection T5 to T5 is 60 mins so this was a valid connection. As found this also has no contingency and a short delay messes things up.
I suspect there is no compensation due. The flight left on schedule and was likely impacted by either weather or ATC (many times spent in a holding pattern!) Unless you know that the delay was within the control of the airline there is no claim
Your hotel accommodation and refreshments during the delay are covered under duty of care so if you spent out you should send copies of receipts for reimbursement

Thanks Caz. You're correct about the min connection time and how as we've proven, it doesn't allow any wriggle room. It's just so frustrating that this wasn't pointed out during booking (this is the 1st time we've ever booked connecting flights) and more so when the onward flight ended up leaving 30 minutes late anyway!
The issue was more the inconvenience and hassle. We only had the clothes we were wearing which wasn't ideal but at least we could shower. The hotel room however was way too hot with no opening window and useless aircon so I only managed about 3 hours sleep. The food wasn't the best either....but it could have been worse.

richardw

If there's a high risk that you wouldn't get to NCL that day, then BA should not have ticketed the itinerary. This minimum connection time thing is twaddle.

BorisThomson

richardw wrote: »

If there's a high risk that you wouldn't get to NCL that day, then BA should not have ticketed the itinerary. This minimum connection time thing is twaddle.

There's not a high risk, people make connections in an hour day in day out. BA don't set out to incur extra costs!

rocky, should you find yourself in this position again push them to get you a taxi. It would have cost no more than the hotel, meals etc and would have got you home far quicker! It's definitely possible, they've done it for me from LHR and a friend LGW to MAN.

richardw

BorisThomson wrote: »

There's not a high risk....

Of course there is! It's highly likely that a long haul flight would be late arriving and that the connection would be missed and that an overnight stay would be needed.
The essential problem is antiquated airline booking systems. They should do a risk assessment before booking and alert the proposed passenger to the risks before allowing risky bookings.

Over on flyertalk there's a daft PMO-LHR-EDI https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/british-airways-executive-club/1874670-why-do-ba-insist-normal-have-non-standard-outposts.html#post28990996 missed connection

The worst is Qatar Airways who sold 40min connections at DOHa.

Murphy_The_Cat

In Jan 2017 our BA flight from PHX - LHR was slightly delayed, which meant we missed our BA connection from LHR-NCL and arrived at NCL over 4 hours later than we should have done.
Our original connection time at LHR, arriving into T3 departing T5 was 1hr 35 mins (5 mins over MCT)
The flight from PHX - LHR had a very poor punctuality record.
The next connecting flight from LHR to NCL was more than 4 hours after the flight that we were due to take.

I was formulating the EU261 claim in my head, on the flight across the Atlantic.
The Claim was submitted the day after we landed.

BA settled in full, 2 weeks later.

OP, I hope that my experience is helpful for you.

rocky1man

@"Murphy-The-Cat"
Thanks for the info. I've emailed customer services and see what happens.

Murphy_The_Cat

rocky1man wrote: »

@"Murphy-The-Cat"
Thanks for the info. I've emailed customer services and see what happens.

If it helps, I went via Revolver and everything was hassle free.

jpsartre

richardw wrote: »

If there's a high risk that you wouldn't get to NCL that day, then BA should not have ticketed the itinerary.

Completely disagree. People need to use a bit of common sense when booking their flight. I avoid 1-hour LHR connection when travelling with my family but I'm more than happy to book them when flying alone. I don't need the airline to decide what's an acceptable risk for me.