Compensation for diverted flight - Gatwick flights landing at Birmingham?

[bellac11]

I wasnt sure whether to put this into travel or not but we were meant to fly into Gatwick yesterday and the flight got diverted to Birmingham.

To add to this, we were stuck on the plane at Birmingham for over 4 hours as we couldnt get off, we then had to find our way back to Gatwick at past midnight and to say it was chaos is a huge understatement, no staff, no information, no order, no nothing.

We had to book again our parking at Gatwick which cost us some money, not much though, about 25 quid

We had nothing to eat either while waiting, or while waiting for cabs to Gatwick or during the journey (obviously). The captain had mentioned that there was a 'voucher' for people to buy something to eat but there was no staff, no information, no signs nothing. All the check in desks at Birmingham were shut so there was no way of knowing how to manage this.

It was no ones fault essentially, because the weather meant we couldnt land at Gatwick apparently and I can understand the impossible logistics of trying to organise buses and taxis for Gatwick flights but also Stanstead and London City at short notice so there were apparently no drivers etc etc. There were no airline or airport staff to direct or inform anyone, there were some people trying to organise the buses (which petered out in the end) but they were from a company who had obviously been called out at short notice so couldnt (and I wouldnt expect it) give us information we needed.

But we didnt get home until nearly 7 this morning, we would have got home at 10pm last night if there hadnt been problems.

Is there a way to claim for the extra cost of the parking and also the inconvenience or is it 'exceptional circumstances' because of the weather?

The flight was Iberia Express.

You would normally claim from your travel insurance

Ok I did wonder this but I think we have quite an excess so it wouldnt even be worth it. For some reason I thought the airline had to compensate although I got confused wading through the various exceptions

I would see if there was a compensation form on their website. If not, I'd probably raise it on Twitter to get a quick response (I wouldn't go guns blazing, just an @ tag asking how to claim compensation for travel disruption). I'd expect to go down this route long before going via travel insurance.

I thought airline had to reimburse your food. As nobody's fault as weather probably just have to suck It up.

Regardless of reason the airline are legally obliged to get you to your original destination at no cost to you. So they should be paying for your cab to get to Gatwick (providing they didn't arrange any transport themselves which you didn't spot / chose not to take).

You don't get paid out when the delay is something beyoud the airlines control ie bad weather.

Yes, this was part of the chaos. We had no information on who, where, when, what was the transport to get us to Gatwick. And because there were a load of other diverted flights there were buses/taxis to London City or Stansted but it wasnt clear which was which, then they ran out of buses after explaining that there would be buses to Gatwick, there were queues all over the place with no one explaining what was what. People flying into Gatwick were getting on the London City buses because they wanted central London rather than to get to Gatwick at god knows what time only to have to get to central London from there and that was causing mayhem because there werent enough seats for the people who actually needed them to the other airports

Then taxis arrived and the drivers didnt seem to know what was going on so were asking who had booked them, some where told they were booked by various flights so you could only get in them if you had Easy Jet for example.

Finally,, and after 1am taxis were more frequent who were just bundling people into them down to Gatwick clearly booked and paid for by whoever, we were then told just get in them even if the airline who booked it is not your airline.

So you were squashed up and I mean squashed up with loads of strangers in these cabs for another 3 hour trip down a snowy motorway. I said to our cabbie that I bet he didnt expect to be doing that in the middle of the night, poor bloke.

Did you pay anything to get to Gatwick or was the taxi fare covered?

No as I said the airlines had booked and paid for them and in the end we were told just get in any one of them, doesnt matter if its your airline or not.

Our out of pocket expenses are the extra cost of the parking, lack of food and a general inconvenience which has made us feel quite ill today.

Its not the diversion per se it was more than arriving at Birmingham to find the place almost shut and waiting for 4 hours on the plane after arrival, chaos and more waiting to try to get to Gatwick, no one had a clue what was going on.

However Im not sure if they can be compensated for