Advice re British Airways Compensation Rejection

Laweb

Looking for some advice regarding compensation to see if we are due any or not.
We recently flew home from Orlando- Miami- Lhr- to Inverness. The Miami flight was late leaving and arrived in Lhr too late for our connecting flight to Inverness. BA booked us on to the later flight to Inverness meaning we had a 7hour wait at Lhr. We contacted Ba regarding compensation but their reply was the outbound flight from Lhr to Miami was affected by air traffic control while in the air so this caused the turn around to be delayed and because of this we are not due any compensation. Looking back this flights gate departure was 45 mins late and arrived in Miami 1 hr 5 mins late,  Can this be right that a flight we were not even on attributed to our case.

thanks

eskbanker

ATC restrictions could undoubtedly have contributed to the delay to the outbound flight, but how delayed was the departure of your flight, and its arrival?

Laweb

Our flight was originally at 21:15 but actually left 23:06

eskbanker

In terms of your initial question, if an inbound flight was delayed because of extraordinary circumstances (allowing the airline to reject a compensation claim) then it's reasonable to deny claims relating to the next one, especially if that's from an airport well away from the airline's main operating bases, i.e. it's not particularly reasonable to expect BA to have spare planes hanging around in Miami.

However, a small ATC delay isn't a blank cheque allowing them to use it as a catch-all excuse for other delays, so if they specifically said that the first flight "was affected by air traffic control while in the air", and that only turned a 45 minute delay into a 1:05 one, then it doesn't seem credible to rely on that for a later 1:51 delay, and it seems unlikely to fall within genuine extraordinary circumstances anyway, unless you're aware of any reasons why there might have been ATC issues that day, e.g. strikes or particularly bad weather, etc?

Sounds like it'll probably be worth pushing back to them, seeking more specific detail about whether it was genuinely extraordinary circumstances, exactly how much of the delay could be attributed to ATC, and whether that was enough to cause the missed connection at LHR.