Refused EU compensation for cancelled flight

[pbcold]

I would greatly appreciate advice from the knowledgeable cohort here please. My return flight from BCN at 8.25pm on Monday night was cancelled on Thursday. I rang the gold line and, whilst booking me a flight for Tuesday, the BA representative assured me twice that I would be eligible for EU compensation. I have now received the email below. Is what BA says correct? They have agreed to pay my expenses only. Thank you.

We are sorry we had to cancel your flight from Barcelona on 19 September. We understand how frustrating this was, especially as you incurred additional expenses. This is not what you should expect of us, and we understand why you needed to complain.

You may have seen in the news that airports across the world have imposed restrictions on the number of flights that airlines can operate. Heathrow Airport Ltd (HAL) has set a passenger limit per day until September. As a result, they have told us to adjust our flying schedule to reduce the number of customers using the airport this summer. Under EU legislation, we are not liable for compensation in this kind of situation.

[NorthernLass]

The 19th was the Queen’s funeral so BA has pretty good grounds for claiming “extraordinary circumstances” in respect of compo, I would think and I’m surprised they didn’t cite that! In respect of the general reduced schedules demanded by LHR, it would probably need testing via CEDR or MCOL to determine how that’s going to be viewed by an adjudicator or court.

[JDB]

A short notice cancellation on Monday 19 Sep was likely to be related to the restrictions imposed for The Queen’s funeral so not eligible for compensation.

[pbcold]

Thank you both. I made my booking on the evening of Monday 12th (after the bank holiday had been announced) and was due to land at 21.50 (well after the curfew for landing in London). Are these points not relevant?

[pbcold]

What are CEDR and MCOL please?

[NorthernLass]

I would say not as BA will just say they hadn’t had chance to decide which services to cancel at that point.

Loads of threads about both on here, as a HFP reader you will quickly become familiar with them.

[pbcold]

Fair enough, many thanks.

[JDB]

There were various different types of restrictions imposed at different times on that Monday and where ATC restrictions are imposed, per Recital 15, the ‘extraordinary circumstances’ for cancellations apply also to other rotations of the aircraft.

[pbcold]

Thank you – complete clarity in half an hour. I am most grateful.

[Froggee]

One thing you have no mentioned is BA should be paying for your additional night in a hotel in Barcelona as well as your din dins and breakfast under their duty of care.

Did you claim for this and was it paid? You don’t get £220 compensation but you are still owed a duty of care.

[NorthernLass]

I assumed this is what the OP meant by BA covering expenses?

[Froggee]

Different people have different definitions so just putting it out there!

[Lady London]

Basically BA chose the wrong excuse to give you.

The perfect and true excuse was The Queen’s funeral.

Had this event not taken place then BA has had plenty of time all summer to cancel flights in good time with plenty of notice to passengers. In fact I think the regulator (CAA) even comnented a few months ago in mid-summer around June, about airlines being able to give the required 14 days notice for cancelled flights as they had been asked early enough to sort out their schedules and not keep cancelling flights at short notice except for the very early days. Even the extension beyond the end of summer that was added, is now a good length of time behind us.

But we keep hearing here, of BA cancelling flights at zero to very short notice so I think BA’s taking the p155. Where a reason has been mentioned other than BA trying to pass it off with this now too-old excuse it’s always been “lack of staff”. So I think this is what’s going on – it’s BA’s own lack of staff that’s the issue.

I do think it’s worth following up on as @NorthernLass says, if it happens on any other day than Monday 19th September.

The fact that BA accidentally trotted out an old no longer valid exuse when there was a perfect factual excuse staring them in the face on that particular day just shows how much lying seems to have become a habit at British Aiways.

[AJA]

pbcold wrote:

What are CEDR and MCOL please?

CEDR stands for Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution which is the mediation service you can use in a complaint against airlines who are signed up to which BA is. EasyJet uses ADR which stands for Alternative Dispute Resolution.

MCOL stands for Money Claim Online which is effectively what was previously small claims court.

[Lady London]

Froggee wrote:

One thing you have no mentioned is BA should be paying for your additional night in a hotel in Barcelona as well as your din dins and breakfast under their duty of care.

Did you claim for this and was it paid? You don’t get £220 compensation but you are still owed a duty of care.

Yeah, and you are also entitled to transport to and from any accommodation needed due to this. Though they’ll try to avoid reimbursing taxi however there are many reasons why might be needed instead of public transport.