Weather delays: when "bad weather" is not a defence

On this page 15

1. Why weather works as a defence
2. The test that exposes a stretched weather claim
3. Weather somewhere else
4. Things that get called weather but are not
5. Foreseeability and named storms
6. What you are owed even when the weather defence is good
7. And your choice between a refund and re-routing
8. Evidence to gather, while it is easy
9. How to put the claim
10. The honest summary
11. Snow, and the question of how much is reasonable to plan for
12. Thunderstorms and the hidden knock-on
13. Claim the expenses even when you accept the compensation refusal
14. If you were told about it before you left home
15. One practical habit

Of all the reasons an airline can give for refusing compensation, weather is the one most likely to be true and the one most likely to be stretched. Genuinely severe weather at your airport is an extraordinary circumstance and it does remove your right to a payment. But "weather" covers a great deal of ground, and a surprising amount of what gets refused on weather grounds is really something else wearing a meteorological coat.

Why weather works as a defence

Compensation falls away where the disruption was caused by extraordinary circumstances that could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken. Weather is the archetype of something outside the carrier's control. It cannot schedule around a thunderstorm cell, it cannot de-ice faster than the fluid allows, and it cannot land in fog below minima.

So when a storm genuinely closes a runway, grounds departures or makes an approach unsafe, the airline is right and you will not be paid. Accepting that honestly matters, because it is what makes the rest of this credible.

The test that exposes a stretched weather claim

Here is the single most useful question you can ask: were other aircraft operating from the same airport at the same time?

Weather is not selective. If a storm closed the airport, nothing moved. If forty other flights departed in the hour either side of yours and only yours did not, the weather is not what stopped you. Something else did, and the weather was available as an explanation.

This is straightforward to check after the event. Flight tracking sites retain historical departure data, and airport social media accounts usually say when operations were suspended. If the record shows normal operations, put that to the airline directly: "The departure record for that airport shows flights operating normally within the hour either side of my scheduled departure. Please explain how the weather prevented only this flight."

That question is difficult to answer without conceding that the aircraft, the crew or the schedule was the real problem.

Weather somewhere else

A legitimate and frequently misunderstood category. Your flight can be delayed by weather at an airport you have never heard of, because the aircraft was coming from there.

This is a real defence in principle, but it carries the same second limb as any other: the airline must show it took all reasonable measures. If a storm in Milan delayed the inbound aircraft by two hours and your flight then went four hours late, the question is what happened in between. Was another aircraft available? Could the crew have been swapped? At a large base with multiple frequencies, the answer is often yes.

So ask where the weather was, when it was, and what the airline did about it. A carrier that says "weather" and declines to say where has not told you anything.

Things that get called weather but are not

Stated reason	What it may really be	Worth challenging?
De-icing queue	Insufficient de-icing capacity or planning	Yes
Crew out of hours after a weather delay	Rostering and recovery failure	Yes
Airport congestion following weather	Knock-on scheduling, not weather itself	Often
Seasonal winter disruption	Foreseeable and planned for	Often
Storm named days in advance	Foreseeable; what measures were taken?	Sometimes
Runway closed by snow	Genuinely weather	No
Fog below landing minima	Genuinely weather	No

De-icing is the most interesting row. Ice is weather; running out of de-icing fluid, or having one rig for a whole apron on a predictably cold morning, is capacity planning. Airlines at northern airports know winter arrives annually. A delay caused by waiting three hours in a de-icing queue is worth challenging on the basis that the weather was foreseeable and the capacity was the airline's to arrange.

Crew running out of legal duty hours is the other. The initial weather event may be extraordinary, but the crew timing out is a consequence of how the airline managed the day, and crew limits are its own business. Crew-related delays.

Foreseeability and named storms

A named storm forecast four days out is not a surprise. That does not make it the airline's fault, and it cannot fly into conditions below minima whatever the notice. But foreseeability bears on the second limb — what reasonable measures were taken. An airline that knew a storm was coming and made no attempt to pre-position aircraft, consolidate flights, or warn passengers early enough to rebook is in a weaker position than one that did.

This is a harder argument than the "other flights were operating" test and it rarely wins alone. It is worth raising when the delay is disproportionate to the weather event — a half-day of wind producing three days of disruption usually reflects a recovery problem, not a meteorological one.

What you are owed even when the weather defence is good

This is the part most passengers do not claim, and it is frequently worth more than the compensation.

The duty of care is not removed by extraordinary circumstances. Whatever the cause, the airline must provide:

• Food and drink proportionate to the waiting time.
• Two telephone calls, emails or equivalent.
• Hotel accommodation where an overnight stay becomes necessary, plus transport between the airport and the hotel.

There is no cap on this and no weather exception to it. A multi-day weather closure means multiple nights of accommodation, and the airline carries that cost for as long as it takes to get you away. Airlines occasionally suggest that a weather event relieves them of this. It does not.

In practice, during mass disruption, hotel inventory runs out and you will be told to arrange your own. Do so, keep it reasonable — an ordinary hotel and ordinary meals, not a suite and a tasting menu — keep every receipt, and claim it back as a separate expenses claim. What gets reimbursed.

And your choice between a refund and re-routing

Also unaffected by weather. On a cancellation you choose between a full refund in money and re-routing to your destination at the earliest opportunity under comparable conditions. "Earliest opportunity" does not mean the airline's own next available seat if a competitor is flying sooner and the airline could put you on it.

During a weather event this is the right that matters most, because the airline's own next seat may be days away. Ask in writing for re-routing on another carrier, keep any refusal, and if you buy a reasonable replacement ticket yourself, claim the cost with the refusal attached.

Evidence to gather, while it is easy

• Screenshot the departure board showing which flights went and which did not. This is the single most valuable thing you can capture and it disappears within hours.
• Screenshot the airline's own notification and the reason it gave at the time.
• Note any announcement: "the airport is closed" and "our aircraft is delayed inbound" are very different statements.
• Keep every receipt for food, hotel and transport.
• Record the doors-open time at your destination.

The full checklist.

How to put the claim

Claim compensation anyway, even if you suspect weather was genuine. It costs you one form, the burden of proof is the airline's, and you will find out what reason it commits to in writing — which is useful whether or not it pays. In the same claim, or immediately after, submit your expenses separately, because those are owed regardless of the answer on compensation.

If the refusal names weather and the departure record contradicts it, reply once with that evidence. If the record supports the airline, accept the compensation point and press the expenses, which are the part people most often abandon and the part the airline cannot escape.

The honest summary

Weather defences are right more often than technical-fault defences and wrong more often than airlines would like you to think. The distinguishing question is almost always whether the weather stopped the airport or only stopped your flight. Everything else — de-icing capacity, crew hours, recovery — is the airline's management of a weather event rather than the event itself, and management is exactly what the regulation makes it responsible for.

Snow, and the question of how much is reasonable to plan for

Northern European and Canadian airports deal with snow every year, and the courts have generally been unsympathetic to the idea that annual winter weather is a surprise. But there is a real limit to this argument, and it is worth stating fairly: no airport holds enough equipment for its worst possible day, because doing so would be absurdly expensive for a handful of hours a decade.

The question is therefore proportionality rather than perfection. An airport overwhelmed by the heaviest snowfall in thirty years is in a different position from one where a routine few centimetres produced a day of chaos. If the snowfall was unremarkable for that location and season, the delay is a resourcing outcome and worth challenging. If it was genuinely exceptional, the weather defence will hold and your energy is better spent on the expenses claim.

A quick sanity check: what did the airport itself say at the time? Airport operators post operational updates during disruption, and language like "we are operating a reduced schedule" sits very differently from "the airport is closed". The first invites the question of why your flight was among those cut.

Thunderstorms and the hidden knock-on

Summer convective weather behaves differently from winter weather and produces a particular kind of unfair outcome. A storm cell sits over an airport for forty minutes, departures stop, and then a backlog takes six hours to clear because every slot for the rest of the day was already full.

The forty minutes is weather. The six hours is capacity. Airlines will present the whole sequence as a single weather event, and in strictness the original cause was extraordinary — but the second limb still asks what reasonable measures were taken to limit the consequences. Where your flight was cancelled outright rather than delayed, ask why yours was selected and whether re-routing on another carrier was considered. Consolidating a schedule after a storm is a commercial decision about which passengers to disappoint.

Claim the expenses even when you accept the compensation refusal

It bears repeating because it is where most money is left unclaimed. Compensation and the duty of care are separate obligations arising from different articles. A weather event defeats the first and has no effect whatsoever on the second.

So a refusal letter that says "as this was due to extraordinary circumstances, no compensation is payable" has not addressed your hotel bill at all, and is not intended to. Submit the expenses as a distinct claim, with receipts, referencing the duty of care rather than compensation. If you bundle them into one message, the airline will frequently answer the compensation point and treat the whole matter as closed.

If you were told about it before you left home

Where a weather cancellation is notified fourteen days or more before departure, no compensation is payable whatever the cause, so the weather question never arises. Inside fourteen days the cause matters again. Either way, the refund-or-re-route choice and the duty of care attach from the moment the flight is cancelled, so an early notification is not a reason to stop reading your rights — it is the point at which you should be insisting on a cash refund rather than accepting a credit.

One practical habit

Photograph the departure board. Not the app, the physical board, showing every flight and its status. It is the cheapest possible evidence and it answers the only question that really matters about a weather refusal.

Questions people ask about this