SAS cancelled flight, delayed alt flight, missed connection nightmare. No response! Hjelpe meg!

MrDionysus

At the beginning of July I was booked to fly from Heathrow to Volda (via Oslo). I booked with Wideroe but the LHR-Oslo flight was operated by SAS.

I arrived at the airport to find my 17:30 flight to Oslo had been cancelled due to the strikes. I was put on the 19:30 flight, which ended up being delayed by over 2 hr 30. Landed in Oslo at 00:43 – the original (cancelled) flight was due to land at 20:45. **Unsure if this counts as a 4-hour delay, or less because of the new flight take off time.

I missed my connecting flight because the new flight (even if it had arrived on time) would not have arrived before the Oslo-Volda plane took off. In London I was promised by SAS staff that someone would be on hand once we landed in Oslo to get me a hotel room. Nobody was. I literally spent 3 hours walking around the airport looking for someone. I had a very large number of bags and by that point was exhausted, so checked into the closest hotel to the airport. It was unfortunately expensive.

I did not get to my final destination until 20 hours after I was originally supposed to.
I used the MSE tool and contacted SAS using their designated form. Apart from a confirmation email I have heard nothing since. Not sure what to do because whenever I phone, nobody answers. What is the next step?

How much, if any, compensation should I expect?

All advice and responses are much appreciated.

Alan_Bowen

SAS are in a real mess. They were fined by the Norwegian government last month for their failure to deal with claims arising from their strike. They were given 7 days to sort out all outstanding claims but they have said that is impossible, every claim has to be manually dealt with and they have months of work outstanding, the government are threatening another fine this month.  

The distance to Volda appears to be around 1240 km so for the delay of 20 hours your claim is £220 plus the cost of overnight accommodation and meals (with no alcohol) waiting for the connecting flight. As you say Norway is outrageously expensive, SAS has said the cost of refunds and compensation is likely to be 1.5 billion Swedish kroner or $145 million. I think unfortunately you are just going to have to be patient