Reply To: *I* requested a refund, still entitled to compensation?

[Londoner]

JDB wrote:

@Londoner the timings aren’t clear your outbound flight, but if you arrived three hours+ late on the rerouted flight you are entitled to compensation of £350

For the return flight, as you went and made your own arrangements your gave up your rights both to compensation and duty of care and if you did not cancel the BA flight but were a no-show you might not get that refund back either. This is set out in 4.2 of the EU261 Interpretative Guildelines:- “However, where an air carrier can demonstrate that when the passenger has accepted to give his or her personal contact details, it has contacted a passenger and sought to provide the assistance required by Article 8, but the passenger has nonetheless made his or her own assistance or re-routing arrangements, then the air carrier may conclude that it is not responsible for any additional costs the passenger has incurred and may decide not to reimburse them.” which will likely still apply in practice.

You are reliant on BA’s goodwill or insurance (? BAPP travel inconvenience) as the law is not on your side. It has been reported in recent weeks of BA paying up in one case on a return from Austria after much pressure, and EasyJet refusing to pay up re an IOM trip where the pax booked his own flight and EasyJet won the ADR.

Thanks. What I am trying to understand is the difference between duty of care and compensation. I understand that I essentially waived the duty of care rights for the return flight but I thought the compensation would still apply as the flight was cancelled on the day of departure.

For the outbound flight I took note of the time the rerouted plan landed, which was 2 hours and 55 minutes after the original flight was due to land. Reading up on this, it seems that the delay may be calculated when the doors open so it may just be over the 3 hour threshold. If not, 50% of the £350 would almost cover my incurred costs.