Historical Flight Data

[Phil White]

What is the best way to access historical flight arrivals and met data for a specific date?
Flight cancelled at 3 hrs notice stating weather conditions although 24 flight arrivals from the UK within two hours of our STA arrived on schedule.
No alternative flight arranged by the airline who are now refusing any compensation for flight with competitor airline.
Many thanks

[Superpilot]

Flight Radar 24 offers that information. Depending on how far back you need to go, it might cost you a subscription (it's cheap and you can cancel immediately). Historical METARs very easily googlable.

PM me the details, I'll have a crack at analysing it for you though I warn you may not like the answer :-)

[Phil White]

Thanks for your kind offer but I think I have now found enough destination arrival info and LHR departures and cancellations info to fight my corner.
​​​​​​I fully understand the many reasons for flight disruptions but being blatantly lied to insults my intelligence to the point where it has now become a mission.

[Jhieminga]

Originally Posted by Phil White

Flight cancelled at 3 hrs notice stating weather conditions although 24 flight arrivals from the UK within two hours of our STA arrived on schedule.

One thing weather can do to an airport is severely restrict how many flights it can accommodate within a certain timeframe. They then have to decide which flights to cancel, with the preference usually being to allow long-distance stuff (which is sometimes already halfway along their journey) to land, while cancelling yet-to-depart flights or short-distance flights. Short summary: the fact that other flights landed doesn't mean that the cancellation for your flight was unwarranted. Weather is a circumstance beyond the airline's or airport's control, so both EU261 and UK261 view this as a situation that does not allow for compensation. That's just my two cents based on the limited facts provided of course... so it could all be wrong!

[WHBM]

Originally Posted by Jhieminga

One thing weather can do to an airport is severely restrict how many flights it can accommodate within a certain timeframe ... Weather is a circumstance beyond the airline's or airport's control,

Sure. And if there is low visibility at say Heathrow, the landing rate can be reduced. But what then happens is that airlines take a COMMERCIAL decision on which of their schedule to drop. Dressing this up as an enforced weather issue is really just done to evade EU261 responsibilities.

The same applies to de-icing, blamed on the weather, when in fact perfectly serviceable de-icing rigs from past times have been sold off, and crews let go, to suit a corporate budget.

[Jhieminga]

I only wanted to point out that the fact that other flights landed is not really a valid reason to say 'my flight should not have been canceled'. There have been instances where weather issues causing cancellation or delay have been judged NOT to be valid extraordinary circumstances but in most cases weather is seen as an extraordinary circumstance as described in EU261 and related regulations. It's a bit of a minefield due to the fact that the mentioned term extraordinary circumstances is still a bit vague, there is no clear specification, it's been that way for years and is only slowly getting better. But we all know that.

Assuming that UK law still follows its EU origins in this case: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizen...cancellation-1