When does the 'exceptional weather' stop being an excuse?

[FL370 Officeboy]

Just received an email from Easyjet about my cancelled flight in the first week of January:

Dear *FL370 Officeboy*,

We’re really sorry that your flight has been cancelled due to the exceptional weather. This is just to confirm that we’ve received your refund request and you should get your refund within the next four weeks.

We always aim to deal with refunds as quickly as possible but given the large number of passengers affected by the snow it’s taking a bit longer than usual. However, you can be certain that we have received your request and that we will refund your payment shortly.

We apologise for these difficulties and hope you’ll travel with us again.


Yours Sincerely


easyJet Customer Services

So my flight in 2 weeks has been cancelled due to the exceptional weather? Wow, do they know the lottery numbers for that week too?

[Bealzebub]

This is just to confirm that we’ve received your refund request

Why do they think you have requested a refund then?

[Hartington]

Let's see if I understand this correctly.

Easyjet have cancelled your flight. They advised you of the cancellation more than two weeks before the flight departs. They have claimed "exceptional weather" as the reason for the cancellation. This is the first you have heard of this cancellation but they are saying you have asked for a refund.

I'd say they are clairvoyant - they can predict the weather two weeks ahead and that you will ask for a refund.

Now I'll be a clairvoyant - I would guess that either something has happened to one or more aircraft in the bad weather we've elready had so they don't have enough any more or that their crews have used up so many hours they won't have enough to operate all flights in 2 weeks time.

[RevMan2]

Doesn't the clock get reset at the end of the month? Or year? Or do the Brit authorities work in a Financial Year time warp?

[Hartington]

From:

Flight Time Limits - Flight Time Limitations (FTL)


6 Duty Periods
6.1 Cumulative Duty Hours

The Company shall ensure that crew member’s total cumulative duty hours do not exceed:

a) 1800 hours in any 12 consecutive calendar months. This limit may be further increased to 2000 hours in any 12 consecutive calendar months for crew members who have a significant share of contracted non-flying office duties
b) 190 hours in any 28 consecutive calendar days
c) 60 hours in any 7 consecutive calendar days.

[Bealzebub]

FTL's (and goodness knows where this theory was hatched?) are on a rolling daily weekly annual or 28 day cycle. They do not ordinarily reset at any point.

Duty periods are quite distinct from Flying duty periods and it is normally the latter which is the restrictive element although the former is used for subsequent rest calculations.

In an attempt to steer this subject back on course.... Why did the authors operator, acknowledge request of a refund? Was it a case that the outbound flight had been cancelled and a refund had been requested for the booking reference with the assumption that this was a round trip cancellation? Could it have been a generic letter used when it should have covered a more specific situation? Did it just come out of the blue without any other action having precipitated it from the author?

There must be more to it, and I am sure it has nothing to do with Flight time limitations?

[Hunter58]

And you are sure it was a genuine easyJet request, not some phoney 'nigerian refund handling center' asking for your bank details in order to refund your flight purchase?

[Joao da Silva]

I cannot see how a flight can be cancelled due to exceptional weather this far out.

If I iudnerstand correctly, the flight was cancelled less than 2 weeks in advance and no re-routing was offered.

You may wish to consider emailing easyJet immediately, stating

(1) they have cancelled the flight within a 2 week period of the departure
(2) they have refunded you without a request from yourself
(3) they have not offered you a re-routing
(4) you require them to pay you compensation of 250/400€ (depending on sector length.)

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/...01:0007:en:PDF

If the flight was more than 2 weeks away when cancelled, then I am afraid you have no recourse under this directive.

[Otto Throttle]

Perhaps all their flight crews are abroad playing golf and chasing hosties on the beach in some exceptional weather and don't want to come home.

Couldn't blame them really - it's a load of cack back here.

[WHBM]

My suggestion is to write to the CAA, with a copy to Easyjet, stating that if they have to cancel operations more than two weeks ahead, their AOC licence should be reviewed for curtailment or cancellation, as they clearly have insufficient resources to handle their currently scheduled operations.

Hopefully this will get a little reaction from both sides.

[Capetonian]

The wording of the original email implies to me that they are processing a refund which you had previously initiated. The way I read it, it does not refer to a flight in early January.

You know better than anyone else, but it seems to me that this refers to a flight that was cancelled in the past.

[FL370 Officeboy]

Yes this email was in response to my request for a refund for the affected flight. They previously sent me an email stating that the flight was cancelled...I asked for a refund...then they sent this.

Capetonian - I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion but I can assure you this was referring to a flight a couple of weeks in the future (start of Jan),

[jerboy]

WHBM

You serious? Isn't suggesting 'canceling their AOC' pushing things a wee bit far for one cancelled flight with an airline that carries c. 48,000,000 pax a year and operates 175 aircraft?

Now I'm no Easyjet fanboy (in fact I'll avoid them if I can), but writing a letter like that to the CAA would result in nothing more than a few laughs (both there and at Easyjet) and perhaps a generic response letter at best. Certainly Easyjet aren't gonna sit up and say "oh they might stop us flying tomorrow".

If the CAA were going to cancel EZY's AOC, do we not think that their shocking performance at LGW over the summer would have been a more likely candidate?

Although, back to the original post. Perhaps the reason for cancellation was due to a totally weather unrelated factor, and the 'exceptional weather' excuse was wheeled out purely as a mistake due to the amount its been used the past few weeks? Difficult to say, but certainly not good on Easy's part...

[Nicholas49]

I second what jerboy says.

WHBM - do you honestly think that the CAA is going to "revoke their AOC licence" given the substantial disruption easyJet has suffered, most of which has not been their fault, owing to the December snow and the inability of the British airports to which they operate to handle it? I think not, somehow.

[groundbum]

easyjet refunds

see previous posts by me, groundbum, on getting refunds out of Easyjet.

the EU compensation arrangements were written so airlines did not have to pay out if it would be unsafe to operate the flight. Fair enough. But this CANNOT be expanded by the airline to say everything was a mess due weather so they cancelled the flight. Cancelling flights left right and center due to weather disruption is down to (a) how much spare equipment and crew the airline has on standby (b) how well prepared their airport partners are for cleaning snow (c) how much spare capacity they have in their ops system to dispatch flights out of schedule, etc. All of these issues are under the airlines control. Obviously trying to attain nuclear SAC levels of resilience would result in tickets costing £1000+, so it's not done.

But that doesn't mean the airline gets out of their compensation obligations. Take em to court and don't accept 50%. Worse you'll lose is your £30 filing fee. Inb my case I pointed out other operators wre flying the exact same route that day so Easyjet paid up when pushed.

G