A cancelation that took off in the end!

zjoliveira

I received an email from the airline saying that my flight was cancelled 4 days before it was due to depart. They claim that this was due to "Finnair, among other airlines, under the threat of legal action from Heathrow Airport Holdings in London, was required to limit the number of customers departing from Heathrow Airport due to heavy congestion at peak times" and "as this is an exceptional condition, the standard compensation will not be paid". They provided me with no alternative flight as they said all planes from their own company or other companies were full.
On the day of departure, I discovered that the plane did indeed take off at the same time and with the same flight code as my original ticket. As such, I don't think this was a "flight cancelation" as they claim, but simply a "denied boarding". They keep insisting that they won't give me any compensation. Is there anything that I can do to pursue something more than just a ticket refund?
Thanks for your help in advance.
Jose Oliveira

bagand96

The aircraft may have departed without any passengers as a positioning flight. The flight is still cancelled as a passenger service, and the airline are just moving their aircraft.  However I don't know how you'd go about finding out if it departed without any passengers, or whether it departed with a reduced passenger load.  One would be cancellation and one would be denied boarding.

You were entitled to re-routing whether it was extraordinary circumstances or not. If Finnair couldn't re-route you would have been entitled to find your own re-routing and claim the costs of this back from Finnair.

eskbanker

My belief is that the denied boarding provisions within the regulations only apply if the passenger presents themselves for boarding, but there is an alternative interpretation:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6401223/virgin-atlantic-family-holiday-disrupted-by-airline-they-booked-us-on-a-different-flight/p2

zjoliveira

eskbanker said:

My belief is that the denied boarding provisions within the regulations only apply if the passenger presents themselves for boarding, but there is an alternative interpretation:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6401223/virgin-atlantic-family-holiday-disrupted-by-airline-they-booked-us-on-a-different-flight/p2

The issue is that I only found out that the flight wasn't cancelled when I checked Flight Tracker and saw the flight had departed. I know for a fact that the flight went from London to Helsinki as intended. Up until then, I had received an email saying the flight had been cancelled and was reassured multiple times via their chat that there would be no flight on that day.

eskbanker

zjoliveira said:

eskbanker said:

My belief is that the denied boarding provisions within the regulations only apply if the passenger presents themselves for boarding, but there is an alternative interpretation:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6401223/virgin-atlantic-family-holiday-disrupted-by-airline-they-booked-us-on-a-different-flight/p2

The issue is that I only found out that the flight wasn't cancelled when I checked Flight Tracker and saw the flight had departed. I know for a fact that the flight went from London to Helsinki as intended. Up until then, I had received an email saying the flight had been cancelled and was reassured multiple times via their chat that there would be no flight on that day.

Yes, I'm not saying that you should have presented yourself for boarding, but simply observing that (IMHO) the denied boarding provisions in the regulations are written in such a way as to set that as a precondition for a compensation claim on those grounds.

bagand96

zjoliveira said:

eskbanker said:

My belief is that the denied boarding provisions within the regulations only apply if the passenger presents themselves for boarding, but there is an alternative interpretation:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6401223/virgin-atlantic-family-holiday-disrupted-by-airline-they-booked-us-on-a-different-flight/p2

The issue is that I only found out that the flight wasn't cancelled when I checked Flight Tracker and saw the flight had departed. I know for a fact that the flight went from London to Helsinki as intended. Up until then, I had received an email saying the flight had been cancelled and was reassured multiple times via their chat that there would be no flight on that day.

The aircraft departed as intended.  It's whether any passengers were onboard or whether it was cancelled as a pax flight.

zjoliveira

How would I be able to find out whether the flight took off with or without passengers? Would this be something I could find out via a freedom of information request?

eskbanker

zjoliveira said:

How would I be able to find out whether the flight took off with or without passengers? Would this be something I could find out via a freedom of information request?

FoI requests can only be made to public sector bodies and I don't believe that there are any who'd hold such information and be required to disclose it....

bagand96

zjoliveira said:

How would I be able to find out whether the flight took off with or without passengers? Would this be something I could find out via a freedom of information request?

Only thing I can think for sure is the airport departure screens/website on the day.  They'd have shown the normal Check In/Boarding/Departed if it operated with pax, and Cancelled if it didn't.

You could try some of the flight tracking/statistics websites using the flight number and date.  But I'm not sure how accurate they'd be, depending on how they work they may have "seen" the aircraft and listed the flight was operating.

Westin

bagand96 said:

zjoliveira said:

How would I be able to find out whether the flight took off with or without passengers? Would this be something I could find out via a freedom of information request?

Only thing I can think for sure is the airport departure screens/website on the day.  They'd have shown the normal Check In/Boarding/Departed if it operated with pax, and Cancelled if it didn't.

You could try some of the flight tracking/statistics websites using the flight number and date.  But I'm not sure how accurate they'd be, depending on how they work they may have "seen" the aircraft and listed the flight was operating.

I am afraid that is not a fool-proof way to check.

An empty, or positioning flight, might still show on airport departure boards. Sometimes they might have a “P” tagged onto a flight number (e.g. AY670P), other times not even that and the original  flight number may still show on boards and even at a gate. Depends how the airport have updated their display systems.

zjoliveira

Westin said:

bagand96 said:

zjoliveira said:

How would I be able to find out whether the flight took off with or without passengers? Would this be something I could find out via a freedom of information request?

Only thing I can think for sure is the airport departure screens/website on the day.  They'd have shown the normal Check In/Boarding/Departed if it operated with pax, and Cancelled if it didn't.

You could try some of the flight tracking/statistics websites using the flight number and date.  But I'm not sure how accurate they'd be, depending on how they work they may have "seen" the aircraft and listed the flight was operating.

I am afraid that is not a fool-proof way to check.

An empty, or positioning flight, might still show on airport departure boards. Sometimes they might have a “P” tagged onto a flight number (e.g. AY670P), other times not even that and the original  flight number may still show on boards and even at a gate. Depends how the airport have updated their display systems.

I did receive a message via their app to go to "Gate 14" on the day. I assume this is likely to be because the flight was still operating with passengers?