European flight compensation question

Helsabelsa

Hi!
So, I was delayed at Gatwick for 2h45m on an easyjet flight to Turin because 1) the aircon went funny at point of take-off so they headed to the side of the runway and called an engineer, 2) when this was sorted then then said they needed to refuel, 3) they then needed to await someone to help the plane get back to the runway and await a new take off slot. 

By the time we were about to land in Turin, a huge storm had arrived, meaning we were then diverted to Milan. We finally got to Turin by coach at 3:10am, when we were originally due in at 7:40pm the night before.

My argument is that planes were still landing for quite some time after our originally expected arrival time, and we would not have hit the storm were it not for the original issues at Gatwick - they are the route cause of this horrendous delay. EasyJet keep ignoring that element and denying the claim for bad weather. Can I argue this? Is there any precedent for this?

Aside from this, the whole time all we were offered was one chocolate bar...for a 7hr30min delay. Then unceremoniously dumped at Milan airport with no guidance or info as to what happened next. 

Any intel or advice very very welcome please!

la531983

You wont get anything as the weather caused the delay to go over 3 hours and thats out of their control. If the weather hadnt happened you would have landed within the 3 hour cut off. No compo is due imo but feel free to go and ask Bott and Co and see what they say.

https://www.bottonline.co.uk/compensation/flight-claims/flight-delay-compensation?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=googlecbrandfdccpc&gclid=Cj0KCQjwrfymBhCTARIsADXTabk8huyWkTfotvndSalt-pJiUbtq8wOCeSa10Z8wOEi8Q2QNNwQbq1kaAjHJEALw_wcB

eskbanker

Helsabelsa said:

My argument is that planes were still landing for quite some time after our originally expected arrival time, and we would not have hit the storm were it not for the original issues at Gatwick - they are the route cause of this horrendous delay. EasyJet keep ignoring that element and denying the claim for bad weather. Can I argue this? Is there any precedent for this?

Unfortunately the precedent probably supports EasyJet here, as they'll cite Marcela Pešková and Jiří Peška v Travel Service a.s., which ruled that where a delay is caused by both extraordinary and non-extraordinary circumstances, the time caused by the extraordinary element should be deducted from the total, in order to ascertain how much of the delay was within the airline's control:

https://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?num=C-315/15

In other words, if the non-extraordinary component of the delay was less than three hours, EasyJet wouldn't be held liable to pay compensation.

While you can indeed argue that extraordinary circumstances wouldn't have come into play if it wasn't for the original EasyJet delay, I don't believe that this would be seen as enough to counteract the precedent, but no harm in trying - if you obtain EasyJet's final response and it doesn't work for you, you can escalate to Aviation ADR to see if they agree.