Advice about delayed Qatar Airways flight

[SHK]

Hi all,

I would be grateful for some advice please. I travelled with Qatar Airways from Manchester to Doha on 10th Dec 22 along with my toddler. Flight was delayed for 4+ hours. There was snow at Manchester Airport. We were made to board the aircraft, and we sat in the aircraft for 4 hours before it took off. Reasons given were that they were waiting for the teams to arrive and de-ice the aircraft. Drinks were offered during this waiting time, but no food or snacks, until the flight actually took off.

I wrote to them requesting a compensation for the delay under EC Regulation 261/2004, and was told no compensation is due because of poor weather conditions.

I got the following response:

”

Thank you for your email.

We are sorry to hear that you experienced flight delay of QR028/10 December 2022 from Manchester to Doha.

We understand the inconvenience that you encountered and can fully appreciate how unsettling this situation must have been for you. Although every effort is made to achieve on time departures, there are occasions when flights are delayed due to circumstances beyond our control as it unfortunately happened with QR028, which was due to unfavorable weather conditions.

Nonetheless, customer satisfaction is important to us and we would like to ensure deficiencies noted are acted upon immediately. Your comments on the way this disruption was handled have been seriously noted and highlighted to the relevant departments for their information and reference.

We regret any inconvenience caused and remain hopeful that you will still consider using our services again”

Is it worth that I try to take this further?

Many thanks for your input.

[Lady London]

I would say there’s a good chance you are stuck with it.
Weather is a “get out of jail” card exempting airlines from paying compensation.

Many, many times airlines will lie and try to say a delay was caused by weather, when it wasn’t. But in this case with snow about, even though the airline should have got their act together and ensured to have deicing done on time I think they’ll get away with it.

Ground handlers not being there to welcome planes or process them out or subcontracted baggage handlers not being available could be argued to still be the airline’s fault. But as every aircraft leaving Manchester probably needed deicing and perhaps only 1 team deicing, or few sets of equipment for the whole airport, and as we know airports on the UK simply don’t maintain enough teams or snow equipment anyway, on balance I would say Qatar can squirm out of paying you compo.

What concerns me more is that in the US, the Department of Transportation says passengers may not be kept on an aircraft on the ground longer than, I think, 3 hours and passengers must be allowed to get off the plane if any delay is longer than that. The plane must return to a gate if it’s left the gate, and passengers must be allowed back off the plane into the terminal over that time. There are heavy fines for airlines if passengers are confined on the plane longer and the DoT has indeed levied them. This concerns me more and I am wondering why the CAA in the UK does not protect passengers in the same way.

[NorthernLass]

There were huge numbers of cancellations and delays due to snow etc that week – I remember as we flew out to the USA on December 13th and were very lucky that conditions had started to improve that day and we got away on time. So I think the airline would just point to that and with it being so widely reported it would be very difficult to argue against it.

It’s extraordinary that no food was available though, I would consider that to be a failure of duty of care although I’m not sure that there’s anything to be done about it now.

Just to clarify, was it a 4 hour delay in total or 8 hours (it’s not clear whether you meant you had 4 hours at the airport then another 4 hours on board the aircraft)?

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

There is an exemption from providing duty of care where providing it where it it’s not practical or can cause further delays

It’s a hard one especially where there are rolling delays and it’s not always easy to restock food etc.

Ditto letting people off can mean more delays as you need baggage handlers to retrieve the baggage and then crew hours come into play as well and you don’t want a whole flight cancelled because of that.

[NorthernLass]

I’ve been in a situation on a BA (!!) plane at a much smaller airport than MAN and the crew took themselves off to the terminal and bought the only food items which were available for us, which happened to be Dunkin’ Donuts! My teenager was thrilled, needless to say.

[Lady London]

BA Flyer IHG Stayer wrote:

There is an exemption from providing duty of care where providing it where it it’s not practical or can cause further delays

It’s a hard one especially where there are rolling delays and it’s not always easy to restock food etc.

Ditto letting people off can mean more delays as you need baggage handlers to retrieve the baggage and then crew hours come into play as well and you don’t want a whole flight cancelled because of that.

Of course that’s airlines’ point of view. But sensibly the US DoT has put limits on the amount of time. We should too and I would say 4 hours is way, way too long.

[BA Flyer IHG Stayer]

It’s written into the regulation.

Para 18 of the opening section

“Care for passengers awaiting an alternative or a delayed flight may be limited or declined if the provision of the care would itself cause further delay.”

If a plane is no longer at the gate it makes it very hard to provide Duty of Care.

And if the plane is in a taxi queue for something like decicing returning to the gate just delays it even more. That’s if a gate is even free,

I’m not saying it’s ideal but if I was on a delayed flight that gets further delayed because someone wants to get off I’d be pretty hacked off and you’d be as well.

[JDB]

@Lady London – you have missed one very important proviso of the four hour rule (or three hours for domestic flights). If you elect to get off the plane, the airline has no obligation to let you back on. Airlines even have dispensation to carry your hold luggage without you in these circumstances. In addition there are lots of caveats around safety and ATC instructions to the captain that can extend or negate the 3/4 hour rule.

[SHK]

NorthernLass wrote:

There were huge numbers of cancellations and delays due to snow etc that week – I remember as we flew out to the USA on December 13th and were very lucky that conditions had started to improve that day and we got away on time. So I think the airline would just point to that and with it being so widely reported it would be very difficult to argue against it.

It’s extraordinary that no food was available though, I would consider that to be a failure of duty of care although I’m not sure that there’s anything to be done about it now.

Just to clarify, was it a 4 hour delay in total or 8 hours (it’s not clear whether you meant you had 4 hours at the airport then another 4 hours on board the aircraft)?

We boarded the aircraft on time, but waited 4 hours in the aircraft before it started to move.

[SHK]

Thanks all for your valuable input and thoughts. I suppose QA + airport management would have probably known that delays would be expected due to the weather conditions, backlog of other flights taking off from Manchester airport, paucity of deicing equipment and indeed the deicing teams- I feel it would have been just better to delay boarding; instead of having all the passengers on the plane and restricted inside for 4 hours.

I am however surprised that snowfall in December in the UK, wasn’t really an extraordinary occurance!

Nevertheless, seems like pursuing it further is likely to be a waste of time.

[AJA]

I don’t see any point pursuing this. Even though a 4 hour wait on board is not particularly pleasant I suspect that the reason they got everyone on board was the slim hope that an earlier de-icing slot may have come up.

As for compensation the other key point is how late did you arrive in Doha? A 4 hour delay at the start may not result in a 4 hour delay in arriving at the destination. I’d be very surprised if there wasn’t an attempt to get to the destination faster ie they’d have attempted to make up time en-route.