To ask what happens now my flight has been cancelled?

[tpwk]

I was due on a flight that was cancelled tonight and the communication from the airline has been woeful.

Everyone at the airport just shrugged and said it wasn’t their problem, to go through the app and sort it out there.

I did that and I have a new flight tomorrow, and I’m in a hotel. I know things like dinner tonight and food tomorrow can be claimed back, but what about things like the Airbnb I’ve paid for for tonight in my original destination? I’ve messaged the hosts and explained that I won’t be there tonight, so I’m hopeful they’re going to keep the reservation for me, but if they don’t, then what?

How do I claim the compensation due under UK 261? What do I do now?

Then take your claim to aviation ADR and they'll look into it further.

The poster was suggesting the Airbnb cost would be covered.

it isn’t.

Presumably fairly easy to check.

I had a terrible experience with Air India last year. Multiple delays, cancelled flights, ended up in Bangladesh at one stage. Also got on a plane only to be told an hour later that we all needed to get off as there was a fault! We were awake pratting about for a full 36 hours.
Anyway, a couple of months later I got fully refunded plus £500. I had to chase it up repeatedly and, they claimed to have sent it at one point but actually hadn't! Got there in the end though.
I'll never travel with them again. We got sick too as the man in front of us was throwing up and had the flu yet they only asked him to wear a mask an hour before the plane landed. Absolute nightmare. And no, nobody at the airport gave a stuff!

I’m going to have to, what a pain in the arse

ATC? I don’t know how to or where I’d even start

Go to the Martin Lewis website - there's full info there.

My recollection is that they can only refuse compensation if the cancellation was caused by bad weather. Being short of air crew is the airline's fault.

Problem here is we have what was supposedly heard at the gate (?) verses the reality of what operations behind the scene will have been dealing with.

The two may not necessarily align.

Crew are rostered on standbys for a set number of hours, once that standby starts their available hours start ticking down. It’s entirely possible that given the multiple delays yesterday by the time they will have used the crew on airport standby and then started calling the ones on home standby and by the time they get called they might not have enough hours available to operate the flight, bearing in mind they have to operate the return flight as well.

My DD is crew for easyJet, she left here at 1.30pm yesterday and was at the airport nearly 5 hours before her flight could take off. The aircraft was delayed getting into Bristol so her flight couldn’t board and missed their take off slot. She didn’t get home til 4.15am and isn’t up yet so I don’t know what impact it’s had on her roster for today. Crewing aircraft is really complex!

But the OP has since been told that the delay was actually caused by Air Traffic Control issues. Which is outside the airline's control. It's not just weather they don't necessarily have to compensate for, it's anything they can't control or be reasonably able to predict.

This is a rumour at best.

You can check whether other flights from your airport were cancelled, as a starter for 10. That would indicate it wasn’t related to one crew member on one airline.

I assume you are not an expert in aviation or meteorology and that your assertion that it’s ridiculous comes from a place of significant ignorance.

UK 261 compensation doesn’t apply when things are outside the airline’s control. So that includes bad weather and Air Traffic Control restrictions. So if the cancellation was due to ATC, no compensation will be given. It could well be that due to severe weather elsewhere, the incoming crew (or standby crew) couldn’t get there due to ATC restrictions.

For example, my cancelled flight last week was due to the severe weather in Italy. However, my flight was the only one cancelled that night and every other flight was delayed but left eventually. Turns out mine couldn’t because the incoming plane had to be diverted to Milan due to the bad weather which meant there was no plane at my airport for us to depart on.

Trying to get compensation can wait until you get back. Let is go for now and enjoy your holiday.

ATC restrictions on take-off times ("slots") could well have led to even a standby crew being out of hours- point covered by @Iamanunsafebuilding , similar with night noise curfews (very common in some European countries)

There's a whole host of possibilities.

@tpwk I feel your pain. Our EasyJet flight was cancelled on Thursday evening after hours of delays at Gatwick. We couldn’t re-book until the App confirmed the cancellation by which time the Friday flights were full or super expensive and would have made our weekend stupidly short.

The unused hotel cost us £140 in cancellation fees and the wasted parking is all lost. We could, I suppose try our insurance but it’s such a ballache we probably won’t.

So it’s a dull and sad weekend at home missing our grandchild’s birthday party.

I hope you enjoy your holiday soon.

No, I think it’s an utter farce.

Multiple crews walked past us in the hours that we were sat at the gate. All airlines keep crew on standby for exactly this situation. The fact that the airline chose profit over paying for staff to work the flight is a joke. Realistically it was a late evening flight, we didn’t need drinks serving.

Enjoy your holiday OP and worry about everything else when you're back. Please don't spend your time away chasing a few hundred quid in compensation. Easyjet customer service is notoriously shit.

Crews walking past you will have been assigned to other flights.

You can't have an unlimited number of standby crew.

If it was a bad day for disruption standby crew may have been used early in the day and if you were on one of the last flights out it is entirely possible there ended up being no crew for your aircraft - that can and occasionally does happen at airlines during mass disruption, not just the Low Fare operators.

If you think the crew are there just to serve you a drink then you are being wilfully ignorant. The crew are there primarily for the safety of the passengers and there are legal limits on how many crew have to opted an aircraft. You are making yourself look ridiculous now.

The others crews walking past will be operating other flights and they will have had crew on standby, they will have either used them already or they ran out of hours.

It’s a touch more complex than that. Surely with a brother in the industry you can explore that some more.

(My family owned a small non-passenger airline in the 90s-00s, 2 of my mum’s siblings are pilots and my sister was an air steward.)

I can’t believe they didn’t ask if any of the passengers knew how to make coffee or if anyone had flown a flight sim so OP wasn’t grounded. So selfish. Everyone knows you don’t need any qualifications or training to operate a flight in any kind of weather.

Totally! Honestly, how hard can it be 😂?!

We had 6 flights cancelled with BA back in March and got stuck in Abu Dhabi when the war kicked off. We eventually had to pay 5 grand with emirates to get home

BA covered the additional flight, refunded the original cancelled on and paid all our expenses.

took about 3 weeks as they were inundated but the correct advice is to send everything to the airline

This. Honestly, you're making yourself sound very dim now OP.