Delayed Flight - "Exceptional Circumstances"

garlieston

Westin said:

garlieston said:

Westin said:

garlieston said:

BA fly to Costa Rica daily so having some redundancy of crew would not be out of the way, its down to them to keep their backs covered 

No they don’t. 

according to their flight schedules they do

Check again.  Currently 3x weekly LGW SJO.  These operate on a B777. What you are seeing will be indirect flights, likely via MIA then an onward AA connection. 

Stand corrected

PatMaguire

I'm grateful for the comments on this thread. The original question was whether staff (in this case one of 3 pilots) being ill/injured away from the plane was covered by "Extraordinary Circumstances" in the EU Legislation as transferred into UK legislation or had been established as a precedent. Some of the comments are emphasising the moral/ethical issues of claiming compensation from an airline either in these circumstances or as a general issue in these difficult times. As I say I'm grateful for these comments but I can deal with the ethical bits myself. I will pose the legal question to the Civil Aviation Authority and share their answer here.

garlieston

PatMaguire said:

I'm grateful for the comments on this thread. The original question was whether staff (in this case one of 3 pilots) being ill/injured away from the plane was covered by "Extraordinary Circumstances" in the EU Legislation as transferred into UK legislation or had been established as a precedent. Some of the comments are emphasising the moral/ethical issues of claiming compensation from an airline either in these circumstances or as a general issue in these difficult times. As I say I'm grateful for these comments but I can deal with the ethical bits myself. I will pose the legal question to the Civil Aviation Authority and share their answer here.

Good luck with the CAA ,they will probably give you some non commital answer, even though they are responsible for overseeing the regs they dont like rocking the boat and are a bit toothless. If no joy with then give Bott and co a try.
Agree with you on the ethical bit ,this forum should be (and always used to be)about the regs being properly followed by the airlines ,they still treat their passengers with contempt so let them feel the weight of the regs ,lets leave the moral high ground for when they clean up their act

DYounger

I was also affected by this delayed flight. My claim for compensation was rejected due to the delay being for operational reasons. It’s interesting if your claim was rejected for exceptional circumstances, have they changed tack? 

CKhalvashi

garlieston said:

BA fly to Costa Rica daily so having some redundancy of crew would not be out of the way, its down to them to keep their backs covered 

I don't believe they do fly daily, and this may involve multiple aircraft types. An A350 crew can't jump into a 777 and fly it as they won't be rated for the aircraft. Most crew are rated for 1 (or at most 2, normally Airbus on CCQ, but this isn't applicable to BA) aircraft type. Again, not sure if it's relevant here but it may be.

garlieston said:

The_Fat_Controller said:

BA have crew members on standby at home for this type of exceptional circumstances, however expecting them to be on standby at an overseas destination is ridiculous.

I think BA have fulfilled all their obligations in this case.

It's not an exceptional circumstance, an employee of BA got injured in their own time ,please point to the bit in the regulations where this is covered ,also where is the list that shows for each airline at which airports they can claim shortage of flight crew as an exceptional circumstance

It is an exceptional circumstance. The crew member contractually will be on duty from the time they arrive at their home base to the time they leave it.

You could raise that the routing may not have required 3 cockpit crew under FTLs, but then BA may be able to counter that flying 2 crew would have put the remaining crew over daily/monthly limits so this equally could not work for you. Whether 2 or 3 crew are required is a matter of duty time, not flight time, so the FTLs don't automatically go in your favour if the flight time alone is less than this.

Sandtree

Westin said:

I don't think BA can be expected to have reserve flight deck crew on permanent stand-by in far flung places like Costa Rica.  Unfortunate that one of the crew was injured and could not operate the flight and that you experienced a 10+hr delay. Glad however that BA looked after you during the delay and paid out for your Gatwick hotel.  I'd probably put it down to one of those things and leave it at that.

If you look online there are various cases of judges not agreeing... ultimately its inevitable that crew will fall ill at times and airlines either have to pay for reserve crew or pay compensation if they don't (see https://ftpa.com/en/will-the-sudden-illness-of-the-pilot-be-acknowledged-as-extraordinary-circumstances/). That said the article does mention that there are proposals to make changes with a list of exceptional circumstances (inc crew illness)

garlieston

I agree ,and i can't recall any change's so far in respect to extraordinary circumstances , The OP said they had been told the pilot was injured jogging ,i would hardly class that as sudden illness ,more a case of they had made themself unfit for work

CKhalvashi

garlieston said:

I agree ,and i can't recall any change's so far in respect to extraordinary circumstances , The OP said they had been told the pilot was injured jogging ,i would hardly class that as sudden illness ,more a case of they had made themself unfit for work

But they were on duty (meaning being paid as such, away from their base) at the time. That likely will complicate things.

garlieston

Is jogging part of a pilots duty

Sandtree

garlieston said:

Is jogging part of a pilots duty

Given the health tests commercial pilots have to pass... potentially? Their proactive job is sitting down for 8+ hours so need some activity whilst not flying to keep their doc happy