I booked a cruise on the Tui River in Switzerland with flights provided To British Airways.
On the day we were supposed to return home, we discovered that our flight had been cancelled. About 40 people were injured.
BA eventually booked us on a flight leaving in 36 hours but refused to pay us the £220 compensation each due under EU rules.
It says there Adverse weather conditions were to blame and are not covered by the compensation rules.
I have requested official cancellation confirmation to be sent to my travel insurance company and on this form BA approves “exploitation reasonsbecame the reason. Unlike adverse weather conditions, this is not covered by your insurance policy.
AC, Alfreton, Derbyshire
This is outrageous behavior from a company that once considered itself “the world's favorite airline.” You can't get compensation from BA because, as they say, bad weather caused the flight to be grounded, and you can't get compensation from the insurance company because the airline claims it was an operational problem.
The difference is critical. Airlines are required to pay specified amounts of compensation for delayed or canceled flights in accordance with the law. EC 261/2004. They will be able to get out of it only if the breakdown is caused by “extraordinary circumstances.”
The ruling is unclear what those circumstances might be, but years of court rulings have narrowed the list. Unspecified “operational problems” will not be considered an excuse for avoiding payment; weather sometimes happens, but only if it is exceptional and unexpected.
So what was the reason? Both, BA says, are hedging their bets. He claims that bad weather that interrupted previous flights caused crew displacement and this had a knock-on effect on your journey.
He ignored my questions about when, where and how, but that doesn't matter. “Side effects” of bad weather are not grounds for denial of compensation. according to law firm Bott & Co..
BA insisted that it could not comment further as your case was by then already being handled by its CEDR dispute resolution service.
To me this sounded like a delaying tactic. I pointed this out and suddenly everything came to a standstill. Since money had to be extracted from this, I am afraid that other affected passengers may still be left empty-handed.
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