BA stalls over paying out £220 flight compensation

I booked a Tui river cruise package in Switzerland with flights provided by British Airways. On the day we were to return home, we discovered our flight had been cancelled. There were about 40 people affected. BA eventually booked us on to a flight leaving 36 hours later, but has refused to pay us the £220 compensation each due under EC regulations. It says adverse weather was to blame and is exempted from compensation rules. I requested a formal confirmation of the cancellation to submit to my travel insurer and, on that form, BA claims “operational reasons” were the cause. Unlike adverse weather, this is not covered by the insurance policy. AC, Alfreton, Derbyshire This is outrageous behaviour from a company that once considered itself “the world’s favourite airline”. You can’t get compensation from BA because, it says, bad weather grounded the flight, and you can’t get compensation from the insurer because the airline claims it was an operational issue. The difference is critical. Airlines are obliged to pay set sums of compensation for delayed or cancelled flights under regulation EC 261/2004. They can only get out of it if the disruption was caused by “extraordinary circumstances”. The regulation is vague on what these circumstances might be, but years of court rulings have honed the list down. Undefined “operational issues” would not be considered an excuse to avoid a payout; weather sometimes is, but only if it is exceptional and unexpected. So which was the cause? Both, says BA, hedging its bets. It claims bad weather that had disrupted previous flights had displaced crew, and that had had a knock-on effect on your journey. It ignored my questions about the whens, wheres and hows but that’s immaterial. “Knock-on” effects of bad weather are not an excuse to withhold compensation, according to the law firm Bott & Co. BA insisted it couldn’t comment further because, by then, your case was in the hands of its dispute resolution service, CEDR. This sounded to me like stalling tactics. I pointed this out and suddenly it stumped up. Since the money had to be prised out of it, I fear the other affected passengers may still be empty-handed. We welcome letters but cannot answer individually. Email us at [email protected] or write to Consumer Champions, Money, the Guardian, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Please include a daytime phone number. Submission and publication of all letters is subject to our terms and conditions.