Diverted Flight and EU261 Claim

[matt]

A few months ago my flight from Zurich to London City was delayed. Due to the lateness we were diverted to Gatwick instead giving a delay of over 3 hours at London City. On weekends there are flight restrictions at London City so we were too late too land. British Airways are denying my EU261 saying the delays were due to Air Traffic Control restricted operations so is out of their control. However the initial reason for the delay was that the inbound flight was late arriving. I've asked the reason for this but so far they have ignored my question and just repeated the air traffic control restrictions. Is there anything I can do to escalate this? They have been so slow at responding I think that it's too late to try the section 75 claim via my credit card.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

What was the date and flight number - particularly the flight number of the inbound?

It should still be possible to do a playback on Flight Radar 24 and get some clues as to what the delay actually was.

 

[Tetchytyke]

However the initial reason for the delay was that the inbound flight was late arriving. I've asked the reason for this but so far they have ignored my question and just repeated the air traffic control restrictions.

You’ll not get sense out of BA, but there is precedent on this if the ATC restrictions only kicked in after a delay within their control. The MSE website covers it, and the next steps if BA won’t play ball.

 

[matt]

What was the date and flight number - particularly the flight number of the inbound?

It should still be possible to do a playback on Flight Radar 24 and get some clues as to what the delay actually was.

My flight was BA8764 on 11th March 2023 from Zurich to London City (diverted to Gatwick). I'm not sure what the inbound working was.

 

[DanNCL]

Usually the inbound for BA8764 would be BA8763 but it would be worth double checking in case for whatever reason it didn’t form off the usual inbound working that day.

 

[dangie]

Others will give you far more help than I can, but what I will say is don't give up.

In 2019 we flew from Birmingham to Innsbruck Austria with Flybe. As we descended we circled a few times then the captain came on the radio and explained that due to a faulty instrument we would have to divert to Munich Germany. To cut a long story short, following a long wait and a lengthy coach journey we finally arrived at Innsbruck Airport 7 hours after our scheduled time.

Needless to say after we returned home I contacted Flybe for compensation. They offered my wife & I vouchers for £50. Fortunately I then found out about EU261 Compensation. I wrote back to Flybe quoting the compensation rules relating to our flight diversion and delay.

A few days later we received compensation for 450 euros.

I appreciate your case isn't as clear cut as ours was, but keep at it.

 

[Peter Mugridge]

Usually the inbound for BA8764 would be BA8763 but it would be worth double checking in case for whatever reason it didn’t form off the usual inbound working that day.

My flight was BA8764 on 11th March 2023 from Zurich to London City (diverted to Gatwick). I'm not sure what the inbound working was.

I'll have a look now... I'll be able to double check the inbound from the aircraft identity.

Edited to add:

It's debatable whether it was an air traffic control issue; the BA8763 was that aircraft's first flight that day and it landed only 36 minutes late, but the BA8764 departed 85 minutes late, which looks like it was waiting for a slot but that could have been a consequence of the delay to the inbound however an additional 50 minutes looks excessive for that sort of delay.

It then got the diversion because it was too late to reach London City before the closure time of 13.00 on Saturdays.

The three flights ahead of yours landed at London City only a few minutes late - see second screenshot for an example. This demonstrates that there were no widespread delays across Europe at the time; if it had been a general ATC issue I'd expect flights to be heavily delayed all over the place.

I think... you need to appeal the refusal and ask BA to explain why the BA8763 was delayed leaving London City on the way out to form your BA8764, and then ask what caused the additional 50 minutes delay to be incurred. I wonder if there was a minor technical issue delaying the first departure? If so, you could argue that the second delay - even if it was purely waiting for a slot - was a consequence of the first delay.

 

[Mojo]

If you have an Expertflyer subscription you can see the reason for delay. You can get a free trial & look it up, unfortunately I've already had a trial and don't have much use for a paid for account so can't check.

 

[matt]

I'll have a look now... I'll be able to double check the inbound from the aircraft identity.

Edited to add:

It's debatable whether it was an air traffic control issue; the BA8763 was that aircraft's first flight that day and it landed only 36 minutes late, but the BA8764 departed 85 minutes late, which looks like it was waiting for a slot but that could have been a consequence of the delay to the inbound however an additional 50 minutes looks excessive for that sort of delay.

It then got the diversion because it was too late to reach London City before the closure time of 13.00 on Saturdays.

The three flights ahead of yours landed at London City only a few minutes late - see second screenshot for an example. This demonstrates that there were no widespread delays across Europe at the time; if it had been a general ATC issue I'd expect flights to be heavily delayed all over the place.

I think... you need to appeal the refusal and ask BA to explain why the BA8763 was delayed leaving London City on the way out to form your BA8764, and then ask what caused the additional 50 minutes delay to be incurred. I wonder if there was a minor technical issue delaying the first departure? If so, you could argue that the second delay - even if it was purely waiting for a slot - was a consequence of the first delay.

View attachment 136530


View attachment 136531

Thanks, I've just replied to BA again.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Needless to say after we returned home I contacted Flybe for compensation. They offered my wife & I vouchers for £50. Fortunately I then found out about EU261 Compensation. I wrote back to Flybe quoting the compensation rules relating to our flight diversion and delay.
A few days later we received compensation for 450 euros.

I see the DfT has dropped plans for a UK version of EC261 for domestic flights, saying "more work is needed".
So airline compensation will stay at the EU level - the idea was to make it more like the rail delay compensation scheme and tied to the fare paid.

 

[Watershed]

There are some fora that specialise in advising on this sort of issue - such as MSE and Flyertalk (the latter has a specific EU261 thread for BA). In short, it will depend both on the reason(s) for the delay as well as whether the delay could have been avoided through the use of 'reasonable measures'.

BA customer services' response will rarely change once they've decided whether to accept or reject a claim, so really all you can do is to ask them whether or not you are in deadlock so that you can take the matter up with CEDR, the Alternative Dispute Resolution service (i.e. ombudsman service) they're signed up to. As with the rail industry, you can also bring a claim at CEDR if it's been 8 weeks since you initially submitted your compensation claim.

BA customer service reps are given very little time for each claim, so it's best to keep any responses as brief as possible (ideally one or two sentences) to maximise the chances of it being dealt with quickly and actually being read in full. Long essays will simply be skim-read, if at all.

 

[Jim the Jim]

This appears to be a predictable outcome of the ATC's normal operation? Hardly fair for BA to blame ATC in those circumstances.