‘British Airways conned me out of compensation by blaming bad weather’
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Dear Katie,
On Sept 20 I boarded a British Airways flight from Heathrow to Johannesburg. As the plane taxied along the runway for take off, the captain turned it around and took it back to the stand.
He announced that there was a problem with the wing flaps, and engineers were going to check it. We heard lots of grinding noises as the flaps were tested. As a result of this issue we were virtually three hours late in taking off, resulting in our arrival at Johannesburg airport being delayed.
Due to the delay, our flight arrived at the same time as other international flights, which meant immigration control took longer than usual.
By now our connecting flight had departed and we were unable to get another flight until the next day to a nearby airport to our final destination.
This was especially distressing for us as we are both over 70 and had to walk from one terminal to another many times during the day, trying to get onto another connecting flight to get home. The earliest we could get a flight was the next day to another airport around 60 miles away from where we were supposed to land.
I contacted BA and requested compensation for the cost of another connecting flight.
After three months it replied saying that I was not entitled to compensation because the three-hour delay was due to adverse weather conditions, which was beyond its control.
This is not my recollection of events at all. I urged BA to refer to the engineer’s log for that flight. The fact is that other planes were taking off while we were waiting at the stand, so I question whether there really was an issue with adverse weather conditions on that day.
However, there was definitely a technical fault with the plane. It was an overnight flight and in the morning no breakfast was served as the fridges were not working, so the crew felt that the food would be unsafe to eat. The lights were also not working onboard.
This is not so much about compensation as the principle. I am £300 out of pocket for the connecting flight and I think BA should be the one to pay. BA has suggested I claim on my travel insurance, but when the issue is blatantly with BA, why should another company or the passenger have to carry the financial burden?
- SC, South Africa
Dear reader,
By the sounds of it you have had a truly dreadful experience from start to finish on this flight with BA. You also say you didn’t even get to sit with your husband, which sounds like a cheap and nasty trick BA has borrowed from Ryanair or EasyJet to try to make you pay more.
You say you don’t believe BA was affected by adverse weather that day, however I have confirmed that there was a thunderstorm which caused Heathrow Airport to reduce the number of take-off slots for planes from 45 an hour down to 34 at your time of travel. This meant there would have been a slight delay in getting another slot once its original one had been lost, which as you rightly say, was because of a technical hitch with the wing flaps.
When I asked BA why it wasn’t paying compensation for your flight, which was delayed by exactly three hours, it said this was because the technical fault contributed less than three hours to the delay, and the rest of it was caused by the weather issues.
Under EU261 compensation rules BA doesn’t owe you compensation for delays caused by weather events that weren’t its fault. However, it must pay for engineering faults that delayed the flight by 180 minutes or more.
When I asked it how many minutes of delay the wing flap problem added vs the weather, it tried to dodge my question. It was like getting blood from a stone, but finally, it confessed what I had suspected: that the total engineering delay (calculated from the moment the problem arose to the moment the plane was deemed safe to fly) was 175 minutes. Just five minutes shy of the magic three hours needed for compensation rules to kick in.
BA said the total weather delay was 37 minutes, bringing the total departure delay to 212 minutes, however it said the plane was able to make up 32 minutes of time while in the air, meaning that by the time the first door opened in Johannesburg, the plane was exactly 180 minutes late.
I told BA straight up that its calculations were a total con. By attributing 37 minutes of the delay to weather, it had failed to leave a reasonable window of time for the plane to have sought another runway slot, which on a normal day with no reductions, would surely have taken five minutes or more.
Its calculations for the engineering delay assume that on a normal day the plane, once green lit to fly, would instantly leave the runway. Clearly this is a scenario that would never happen in real life.
I feel BA has used the fact that there happened to be weather issues this day to record this technical delay as just under the threshold, to avoid paying not just you, but hundreds of others on the plane compensation.
What it should have done was deducted from the weather delay the average time it takes for a diverted plane to get another slot once a technical issue is fixed, and added this onto the engineering time. Unfortunately I don’t know what this would be because no one, including Heathrow Airport, can tell me. But the data must exist.
When I asked industry experts what they thought about the situation, they agreed with me that it seemed unfair. However, BA is digging in its heels and will not pay you compensation.
Following my involvement however, it has instead paid you a gesture of goodwill amounting to £520. After the utter shambles of a flight in which you were sat away from your husband, there were no lights, you received no breakfast, your bag went missing, and you were diddled out of compensation, this was the absolute least BA could do for you.
Any decent airline would be ashamed, and be on its knees grovelling to keep you as a regular customer, yet BA appears nonchalant. My advice is to take your case to CEDR, an alternative dispute resolution service which BA is signed up for.
It’s free and it will independently decide whether BA should pay. Please let me know if you have success there. If you do, I’ll print it here for the world to see.
A BA spokesman said: “This flight was delayed in part due to adverse weather conditions which were also combined with a technical issue. The delay caused by the technical issue fell underneath the 3hrs limit and so on this occasion, the customer isn’t entitled to claim for EU261 compensation.”
