CEDR win against BA after February storms

[Matt]

In case it’s of any interest or help to anyone, we have just had a successful outcome from CEDR.

We were due to fly back from Copenhagen on the Sunday evening after the storms in February. The weather was back to normal by then – the storms finished on the Saturday from memory. We were in the lounge in CPH when our flight was delayed due to late arriving inbound plane, then delayed overnight. When we boarded the next day the pilot’s announcement said that the cause of delay wasn’t clear, but seemed to be a lack of resources at LHR T5. We subsequently got an email from BA apologising for the delays due to weather. Our flight could only have been just over 2 hours late before hitting the curfew at LHR.

We got our expenses (hotel room, metro ticket) paid without much hassle, but compensation was refused so we went to CEDR. Between my initial complaint and the follow up I pointed out that: Other airlines had flown both CPH-LON and LON-CPH at around the same time (with Flightradar sceenshots)
BA had had many delays and cancellations that day but all the other airlines at LHR hadn’t.
BA hadn’t made any effort, never mind all reasonable efforts to mitigate the problem given that other flights were running they could have put us on.
We would only have been 6 minutes too late for the curfew, which could and should have been avoidable by BA given the many sources of delay they admitted to.

BA claimed a defence of weather, slow taxiing at LHR, night time curfew, and admitted that there was some rotational delay and baggage handling issues that were their fault for a relatively small proportion of the delay.

The adjudicator concentrated solely on the curfew issue – that if BA had avoided the baggage handling delay they’d have been in time for the curfew, and therefore found in our favour. The rest of it wasn’t really discussed in the decision.

[StillintheSun]

Congratulations. Thanks for sharing. The information on the evidence that you provided is very useful should I be in the same position in future.

[Lady London]

Thank you very much indeed @Matt for sharing.
A number of points you covered off in your submission will be very useful to others to include in their own claim if there were similar elements in what happened to them.

It looks like the arbitrator recognised a well put together case when he saw one too.

Well done

[Richie]

They didn’t take reasonable measures in my case. I would’ve been ok being diverted to Stansted or Southend, instead of being plonked in a hotel overnight.

CEDR found in my favour.