EU261 and flights going *early* due to Weather
 

Earlier today I was due to catch a flight from a remote airport in Iceland (covered by EU261). Due to sustained 35+ knot wind (gusting 45 knots) and low cloud at the scheduled time of departure, along with very difficult surrounding mountainous terrain, probable wind shear, short runway (both ends drop off into the sea) and a likely absence of any sort of fancy ILS, the flight on a 9-seater was cancelled

However... a few hours earlier than scheduled the weather was not as bad and a landing and departure would have been much more possible

When EU261 was drafted, pax flying on 150+ seat jets in the geographical core of Europe at well equipped airports was the focus... quasi bush flying wasn't what legislators had in mind

If an airline has aircraft and crew available, phones all the pax, and were to reschedule a flight to be several hours early to avoid forecast bad weather, what happens to an airline's EU261 compensation liability ? Is rescheduling to several hours earlier due to weather allowed ? Is this allowed on PSO routes ? Is there a piece of law which makes this difficult for airlines ? Does pre-emptively making commercial pax flights a few hours earlier to avoid bad weather ever happen ?

EU261 doesn’t cover anything to do with weather as this is outside of the airlines control.

Can’t say it’s never done but in thirty plus years of long haul it never happened to me and practically it would be very difficult in many cases. Leaving aside the issue of airport slots, noise curfews, contacting all the passengers who have tickets to travel a couple of other reasons I can think of:


If the flight is an early AM one moving the departure time forward may infringe the crew’s legal overnight rest requirements - many night stops or even overnight turns at base on short haul these days are already down to minimum hours at accommodation so there is no scope to move timings forward.

If it is not a first flight of the day for crew/machine how does the planned retiming fit in with the sector the aircraft (and possibly crew ) are planned to do before the sector you are trying to change?

I suppose both the above are consequences of how tightly crew and aircraft are scheduled at the llarge operators….there often isn’t any wriggle room in the schedules to start shifting flight timings significantly and often the simplest answer for the operator is to simply cancel the sector(s) directly effected.

was rescheduled like that once in Kiribati - but there was only one hotel and one airline (and one aircraft) so it wasn't difficult........

Also FIGAS occasionally reschedules at very short notice out of Port Stanley - but again everyone is known to everyone so its not hard