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Hi all, thanks for reading.
This week I (and my family) were delayed for nearly six hours (5:55 to be precise) returning from Bologna on a BA flight. The delay was caused by incorrect loading of a luggage container, which then jammed in the hold doors and needed to be cut out, then further delayed because this caused damage to the plane which had to be signed off as safe to fly before we could depart. In addition to this we had an effective downgrade as we had booked in Club Europe using a 2-4-1 voucher for my wife and I, and just miles for my son (6), but due to ongoing issues from the air traffic problems on Monday they were using the middle seats as well, and there was no food service due to the delay.
I haven’t submitted a claim yet, but I’m assuming there should be no issue with the EU261 claim for the delay? Can I also claim any compensation for the change in service?
Thanks in advance for any advice for this novice traveller!
That sounds to me like it will be OK for delay compensation, but I suspect you’ll have a fight for downgrade compensation. BA will probably claim that you were still in CE because you were near the front and boarded early. You should be able to get a customer service gesture of some avios fairly easily, but I think you’d have to go to CEDR/MCOL (or try your credit card for non-delivery of paid for service) to get more than that.
Make two separate claims
One for the delay compensation and the other for the perceived downgrade.
They get dealt with by separate teams and the less complicated you make it the easier it is for them to deal with.
Didn’t want to hijack a recent thread so thought I’d revive and hijack this.
One for the UK261 experts: we were due to fly from London to an EU country on a positioning flight booked with Avios a couple of weeks ago at around 7:30am. On our way to the airport and less than 3 hours before the flight, BA cancelled the flight. I called BA and they offered to put us on the next BA flight at 4:30pm but when I asked them for an earlier flight said they absolutely could not reroute us on the Star Alliance flight that was leaving at 7am or 10am. I had a long haul Qatar J flight from the EU country at 3pm so the 4:30pm option did not work. I ended up buying the tickets in cash on the Star Alliance airline for 7am and we got to our destination.
Two questions: (1) am I able to claim for rerouting costs or will CEDR/court agree with BA that the option they provided was reasonable albeit it didn’t work for my needs? (2) I am yet to hear from BA re the reason for the cancellation but the Flyertalk thread suggests that it was cancelled due to weather. Could this be right if the weather was completely normal in London as well as the destination and both Star Alliance flights (7am and 10am and in fact the 1pm as well) from Heathrow operated on time?
Q1 – yes, there is a risk that BA’s offer to reroute you on their next flight might be considered reasonable, but they do need to refund you in full.
Q2 – yes, it’s possible the weather on a different rotation of the planned aircraft was the cause of the cancellation, but the only way to test this is to make a claim and when it is denied by BA, escalate to CEDR/MCOL to whom they will have to provide evidence. The weather out of the window, at the destination or the operation of other flights is no guide to a potentially successful ‘extraordinary circumstances’ defence by an airline.
@Hcubed you’d left a reasonable, more than needed amount of time between your 2 flights. So you’d allowed for some lateness but a cancellation from BA is too much to expect you to also add even more than the very reasonable time you’d added for contingency, for.
I’d do a claim for BA’s refusal to reroute you as reasonably close as possible to the time of the flight they cancelled, with details of the call I made and their refusal, claiming full ticket costs for the reroute their refusal forced you to pay for. Other airlines had flights available that met your need so I don’t think BA has any excuse for refusing to put you on them. The CAA did remind airlines last year that in rerouting they should include other airlines’s flights – you may be able to find it on a search (Google external restricting to HfP) on the forums on HfP.
Separately I’d claim for the cancellation £220 per seat. I strongly suspect they didn’t have crew or something technical went wrong with the aircraft but have personally drawn the conclusion BA is lying, lying and lying attributing cancellations that are for other factors their responsibility such as the above, to weather. My feeling is that if it’d been a problem with an earlier rotation of that particular aircraft you’d have had the cancellation at tbe more usual time of 1am or so (end of previous day cleanup rather than dawn issue on new day found). So do as @JDB says and challenge them.
I’d go CEDR with this one first as I think you might win on reasonableness but would consider MCOL too.
Please post how you get on.
Thank you both. I will proceed as advised and get back to you with an update in due course.
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