Flight delay due to road closure

larryharvey

Just wondering if this is considered extraordinary circumstances? Road to airport closed due to a crash. But this crash occurred 1am and we were flying 2pm that day.

Grumpy_chap

larryharvey said:

Just wondering if this is considered extraordinary circumstances? Road to airport closed due to a crash. But this crash occurred 1am and we were flying 2pm that day.

Are you saying you missed the flight because of the road closure?
OR that the flight was delayed because of the road closure?  (I suppose that could happen if the crew could not get to the airport)

larryharvey

The second one. Road closure meant staff etc did not get to the airport on time. 

x_raphael_xx

larryharvey said:

The second one. Road closure meant staff etc did not get to the airport on time. 

While it may seem like a big chunk of time to sort themselves out, lateness in a business like an airport would have a huge knock on effect over the course of the day. One late flight in the morning will make the next flight late and so on until they can re-jig the schedules.
Afaik flights only have a very short window so not a lot of room to squeeze in a late flight without throwing everything else out.

larryharvey

But is is considered extraordinary circumstances? 

bagand96

Were there delays getting to the airport at the time of your scheduled departure? 2pm?

larryharvey

No there were not.

bagand96

Would help if you were able to provide more information to build the picture.

How late was your flight?
What was the reason you were given by the airline? (assume delays earlier in the day due to RTC near the airport?)
Have you tried to claim compensation yet and what exactly was their response?

larryharvey

Sorry. Only happened a few days ago so not yet tried to claim. Story is here: 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/flights-delayed-bristol-airport-a38-crash-b2437514.html

Our flight at 2pm got caught in the backlog and we arrived over three hours late in Las Palmas.

bagand96

Ok, so it was a serious accident and road closure affecting nearly all access to Bristol Airport. As the article says no flights took off before 8am (usually flights start around 6am) presumably because staff were caught up in the disruption meaning flights couldn't depart.

Clearly this would cause significant delays to the first rotation flight departures which would knock on to the arrivals, and therefore the afternoon departures.  It's all well and good to say the roads were fine by afternoon but the airlines wouldn't have been able to catch up the delay backlog.  Busy school holiday weekend they're unlikely to have spare aircraft and crews sat around, and given every morning departure was affected there's very little they could do aircraft wise.

Generally the advice is that knock-on delays are not considered extraordinary, however I think on this occasion the airline would be able to successfully claim extraordinary circumstances given the major RTC that effectively closed the airport. No harm in trying though.

larryharvey

I have just read elsewhere that road accidents are not considered EC by the Civil Aviation Authority, and there can be no exceptions? Airports are expected to be robust enough to handle things like this that are forseeable.