Flight delay and cancellation compensation, BA ONLY

jpsartre wrote: »

If they reasonably expected the flight to be delayed more than 4 hours they have duty of care.

Just to correct a slight error, this quote is from the CAA website.


Your rights
If the law covers your long-haul flight, your airline must look after you once you have been delayed by more than four hours.
This means they must provide:
* A reasonable amount of food and drink (often provided in the form of vouchers)
* A means for you to communicate (often by refunding the cost of your calls)
* Accommodation, if you’re delayed overnight (usually in a nearby hotel)
* Transport to and from the accommodation (or your home, if you are able to return there)
The airline must provide you with these items until it is able to fly you to your destination, no matter how long the delay lasts or what has caused it.

On short haul-flights it's after more than 2 hours.
and on Medium-haul flight it's after more than 3 hours.

Corwin wrote: »

Thanks for the message...


There was a technical fault with aircraft, which required repair crew to board whilst we were all on the plane. BA didn't seem to have a clue as to when/if the issue would be resolved. But they kept us cooped up on the aircraft with no food/refreshments for 3 hours. In spirit, they did not meet duty of care. But they might not have violated their duty of care according to the regulations - that is what I am querying.

I doubt you qualify, as a right, for meals and drinks etc. If you required water and made a request to the cabin crew they should not refuse. The fact that the captain did not authorise free soft drinks for everyone shows where BA has ended up. The race to the bottom is still alive and well!

There is also a provision within the regulations where the airline can legitimately refuse to supply free meals and drinks to passengers. That is when the supply of those meals and drinks may then contribute to an even longer delay, and of course, there are no spare meals on board the aircraft, only the number required for the flight. This was probably the case with your flight.

There is also no doubt in my mind that those in the business and first class cabins captain would have been well looked after.

Last final point or two, the captain would have been kept informed by the engineer how long he expected the repair to take. The flight crew must then decide if it is worth the massive disruption and time to off load all the passenger before eventually having to go through the whole boarding procedure again. At some point the flight crew will go out of legal flying hours and that could lead to the flight being cancelled for the day, so there would have been a lot going through the minds of the crew.

Hope you don't mind me explaining the full procedure, it's never quite as simple as it seems.

Good luck.

jpsartre wrote: »

If they reasonably expected the flight to be delayed more than 4 hours they have duty of care.

I would guess that BA did a calculation and hoped that the delay (at arrival due to technical issues requiring repair) would be under 4 hours. Although the aircraft was delayed at deprture for over 4 hours, we arrived less than 4 hours late.


Considering that we were all cooped up on the aircraft for 3 hours (after bording 1 hour late) and coudn't leave to seek refreshment, this was still pretty bad. This seems to slip through the cracks in the legislation.

Tyzap wrote: »

Just to correct a slight error, this quote is from the CAA website.


Your rights
If the law covers your long-haul flight, your airline must look after you once you have been delayed by more than four hours.
This means they must provide:
* A reasonable amount of food and drink (often provided in the form of vouchers)
* A means for you to communicate (often by refunding the cost of your calls)
* Accommodation, if you’re delayed overnight (usually in a nearby hotel)
* Transport to and from the accommodation (or your home, if you are able to return there)
The airline must provide you with these items until it is able to fly you to your destination, no matter how long the delay lasts or what has caused it.

On short haul-flights it's after more than 2 hours.
and on Medium-haul flight it's after more than 3 hours.

Hmmm.... That makes sense there is access to food/refreshment in the airport terminal or outside the airport itelf. But we were all cooped up on the aircraft for over 3 hours (4 hours if you consider that we boarded an hour late).

you would be best posting on the BA thread