4:59 minute delay so no compensation…

https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX%3A32004R0261

The five hours referenced by Wizz refers to Article 6 – Delays and is the point at which, if you were waiting at the airport, you would then be entitled to a refund if you chose not to fly. It has no relevance to the OP if they actually travelled on the flight when delay compensation kicks in at three hours for a flight of the LGW-IST distance. Wizz is playing on the fact that the UK/EC261 text makes no mention of compensation for delays as that came along later via the ECJ decision in Sturgeon.

Wizz makes no claim of ‘extraordinary circumstances’ so, if Mr. AC travelled on the flight, he should be entitled to delay compensation of £350pp.

@JDB answered more succinctly before me

Good morning. This is László from the Customer Services Despairment.

I apologise for the prior erroneous message from my colleague who has now been reassigned to our Almaty field office. In calculating your delay my colleague did not account for the two hour time difference between London Gatwick and Istanbul.

I can now categorically confirm that your flight was only delayed by 2 hours 59 minutes.

Therefore I can only offer you my best wishes as compensation.

Luv ewe

László

@Mr.AC – from the tone of your post I sort of surmised that you might not actually have travelled on that flight so my response was couched in cautious terms. I doubted that even Wizz would be so brazen as to offer that response to a claim for delay compensation. Context is everything.

@NorthernLass – I suspect the word ‘guided’ may be a matter of unfamiliarity with language but it’s also not exactly wrong. The statute says what it says but it’s very old and definitely far from black and white so whether anyone, passenger or airline, is ‘bound’ by anything is a matter of interpretation.

This is why EC261 has been subject to over 70 higher court decisions that alter the effect/meaning of the text and most of those decisions still say that the precedents set by those judgments are subject to interpretation by local courts so still not definitive.

Some aspects like the ‘Right to Care’ bind in principle but not in quantum so that doesn’t help anyone. The courts have decided that any such costs must be “necessary, appropriate and reasonable” so an airline isn’t bound by any specific sum and that is of course intentional.

That’s the nature of civil litigation which keeps huge numbers of judges and lawyers busy.

Mr. AC wrote:

I guess since this turned into a whole thread, might as well ask – no compensation is due in this situation, right? (I did not board the flight as it was clear the delay would be more than 2 hours, and it ended up 4:59 according to them bust most likely was over 5 hours when the doors were opened in IST)

Re: extraordinary circumstance – don’t know what the reason was, but most other flights were departing LGW normally or with slight delays as far as I could see.

Yes, for delay compensation and downgrade reimbursement, you need actually to have flown. Cancellation compensation is more complicated.

Re ‘extraordinary circumstances’ what other flights are doing is rarely a guide to anything. You don’t know where the issue is and there can be a significant number of weather related cancellations while dozens of other flights fly in and out of the same airport. I have no idea whether it affected your flight but the ATC situation across Central Europe/Balkans has been very tricky for some time.