EU flight compensation claim: Air travel distance between LHR and LIS

[lathiat]

Howdy Folks,

Looking for anyone that might have information about calculating the flight distance between LHR and LIS for the purposes of an EU flight compensation claim with British Airways over BA502/BA504 on Sunday the 18th of March.

I ended up with a double-cancellation where they bumped me off the 3PM flight because my inbound QF9 was 37 minutes late (but arrived >2h20m before the following departure) followed by the 7PM flight being cancelled after 3 hours on the tarmac due to damage to the plane and a hotel having to be booked (without assistance) at 12:30AM (woot).

Long story long I filed a compensation claim which they granted but only for 250EUR claiming that the flight distance between the two destinations is 1,482KM however the inflight trip display on the flight itself showed 1,522KM and I have tried about 5 different airport distance calculators that all claim it is roughly 1565KM and I think I found one strange one that said 1530 but that's still >1500.

According to British Airways in my support ticket, verbatim; "The EU compensation amount is worked out by the flown mileage. On your journey, London Heathrow to Lisbon it is 1,482 miles, so the compensation is €250.00." and "The distance of your disrupted journey was less than 1,500km and this has been calculated in accordance with EU legislation."

The last detail I have is that if you calculate using the British Airways miles calculator here:
British Airways - Collecting Avios

It comes up with a figure of 986 miles for Flexible Economy which is apparently "100% of the miles flown" according to Collecting Avios and Tier Points on flights | Executive Club | British Airways and 986 miles = 1586.81 KM

Was hoping someone may be able to shed some light on how exactly they are coming to the figure of 1,482 KM (she said miles, but it's KM).

Cheers,
Trent

 

[kelvedon]

I agree, I reckon its more than 1,482KM they claim. If even using their own Avios calculator it shows as 1586.81 KM, I would be pointing that fact out to them and asking for their source of the distance. BTW what is the EU 261 compensation paid for over 1500kms?

 

[Mattg]

It looks to me like BA is sneakily trying to get out of paying the higher amount. I'm getting a distance of 1,565km for LHR-LIS. The fact that BA itself thinks it's 986 miles (which is also over 1,500km) makes it even more suspicious.

I would be taking this further. I would start by sending a polite email to BA saying that you think they have "miscalculated" the distance. Ask them to clarify how they get 1,482km and ask them to check again. If you get nowhere, you can get an agency involved.

 

[equus]

Perhaps you could ask them what space warp they are using. I am not sure how the distance can be less then the great circle distance involved, which comes out at 1,565 km

 

[MEL_Traveller]

Perhaps you could ask them what space warp they are using. I am not sure how the distance can be less then the great circle distance involved, which comes out at 1,565 km

It depends on which airport the airline has loaded in their system! IIRC there's some discrepancy in the ways some airlines calculate distances to Bangkok, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, with some of them using the old airports in those cities rather than the new ones. For example using Subang for KL instead of the current one. And Selangor in SIN. The extra mile or two can affect bands for award redemptions.

But LIS is way outside of those issues I think. Greatcircle has it well into the 1500km band.

 

[Mattg]

Any update on this? Did you ever hear back from BA?

 

[Mattg]

I was flying BA yesterday and noticed in the in-flight magazine that they had a list of distances from London for all the destinations they fly to. Sure enough, Lisbon is listed as 970 miles from London - which is 1,561km!

 

[lathiat]

Haha! They agreed to pay it out at the >1500km rate

If they hadn’t I would need a photo of that magazine!