How the Dreamliner delayed my dream holiday

Two hours’ delay, when the scheduled flight time is less than two hours, is unacceptable. You have to put this into perspective. If my 15-minute train journey is delayed by 15 minutes, then this 100% delay is equally unacceptable. In this case, two hours is disproportionately long compared to the scheduled flight time.

It was clear that rerouting was mismanaged. Rather than allowing some flights to be delayed by 100% or more but other flights (e.g. long haul) to be delayed by only 5% or 10%, air traffic control (or whoever was responsible), should have ensured that most flights were delayed by only 20% of their scheduled flight time. To achieve this, long haul flights should have been diverted to further afield and short haul flights should have been given priority at other London airports.

The logic for equating percentage time delay as a decider to who lands first seems rather dubious and I wonder if NFH is having a joke.

My supposition is that long-haul flights are probably shorter of fuel whereas short-haul tend to do many quick flights and fuel more rarely as a ratio to landings. Also not all airports can necessarily take all airliners so without going into advanced research I think we can assume that the landing priority is based on safety aswell as practicality.

From Paris Miss Brunwin had three other methods to return to the UK so if the incident had escalated and closed Heathrow returning would not have been impossible.

Fuel doesn’t come into it. They could have landed many incoming long haul flights in Manchester and Birmingham so that short haul flights could land at other London airports. To land a LHR-bound short haul flight in Paris is absurd. Again using percentages, allowing all flights to fly 95% of the distance to their destination would have been preferable to allowing some (e.g. NCE-LHR) to reach only 65% and others (e.g. JFK-LHR) to reach 99%.

That’s a fair point Diesel, however, we’re using recent personal experiences to open up a debate about consumer issues. I think debating whether compensation is needed is a relevant debate.

Personally, I think it’s reasonable to expect some form of compensation or assistance if connecting flights are missed etc. But maybe that’s just me.

Surely there is a difference between compensation where it is an airlines fault and buying travel insurance to cover costs for unseen emergencies. Seems to me that somehow we are getting to the point where an incident that closes an airport is the fault of the airlines en masse.

A missed connection where an individual ariline is responsible for your missed or delayed flight then it seems logical they should compensate. A force majeure incident surely is an insurable item. Or am I misunderstanding the way the EU covers this?

My concern is that we should not over-develop a compensation culture – I don’t think it is healthy to expect to be paid whenever something goes wrong. Often it seems easier, and possibly cheaper, for companies to follow this path than to do what I think is a better action – to provide help. Isn’t that what we should be encouraging? It is what most people – particularly less savvy or inexperienced travellers – would want, I would have thought.
Things go wrong, so you miss your connection – the best solution is surely to help sort out a new connection or an alternative way home. You can’t get home – so help with finding accommodation and food. You are a bit late home – 2 hours after a 2 week holiday really isn’t the end of the world. You get in your car at the airport and then get held up by roadworks – compensation from the Dept for Transport? Where does it stop. I agree with dieseltaylor – isn’t this what insurance you can take out is for? Compensation is paid for by all of us, insurance just by those who want to share the risk.