Furious BA passengers initiate class action after 24-hour delay, missed connections and lost luggage

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

A passenger who suffered a more than 24-hour delay on a British Airways flight from Naples to London Heathrow have told press they are initiating a class action.

Flight BA2613 was scheduled to leave Naples at 9.30am on 17 August, but did not depart until past 1pm on 18 August.

Paola Capobianco, an Italian lawyer on board the flight, told Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica that her group had missed vital flight connections on to Mexico City, as well as arriving without their luggage.

She said that the flight started out as normal, with passengers boarding the aircraft and the cabin crew preparing for take-off.

However, the plane remained at the gate while the captain made several announcements, he said, including that there was a problem with the Electronic Flight Instrument System (EFIS), eventually saying the plane could not leave.

Ms Capobianco says the 180 passengers on board disembarked the plane at 12.14pm to have lunch in the terminal, but were asked to leave their carry-on luggage on the plane, said Ms Capobianco.

At 2.50pm, everyone returned to the flight, with passengers reporting that engines were repeatedly turned on and off.

Ms Capobianco and the rest of the passengers heard more announcements from the cockpit, but could not make out what was being said. They were told by cabin crew that the continuous delays were due to technical malfunctioning and air traffic congestion over Heathrow.

At 5pm, passengers were told the flight had been cancelled and were led off the aircraft. Ms Capobianco says that British Airways put them all on a flight leaving the following day, on 18 August at 12.30 pm, leading to a delay of more than 24 hours.

However, she added that the flight status appeared as “in-flight” rather than cancelled on the airline’s website. Hotel rooms were provided in Caserta, a town about a 30 minutes drive from Naples.

The next day, however, was almost as chaotic. Passengers say they spent two hours queuing at check-in before boarding began.

But at 1.05 pm, the 12.30pm rescheduled plane had not moved from the terminal. As frustration increased among passengers and crew alike, Ms Capobianco recalled that a member of the cabin crew started crying.

She said that some passengers asked to disembark at this point, but were told this went against safety protocol. After several hours waiting ont he tarmac, Ms Capobianco and other passengers contacted the Naples airport police.

A little while after, the captain announced the aircraft was cleared for take-off.

According to FlightRadar24.com, the flight landed at Heathrow at 4.22 pm on 18 August, around 29 hours after it had been scheduled to arrive.

Ms Capobianco and her friends say that they missed a 10.30pm connection from Heathrow to Mexico City, and that their luggage had also never left Naples. They made the decision to return home to Italy.

The incident comes as the British flag carrier announces it will cancel tens of thousands of flights into the winter schedule.

BA will be taking nearly two million seats out of the market, on both short-haul and intercontinental flights, from late October 2022 to late March 2023.

A British Airways spokesperson told The Independent: “We apologised to our customers for the delay to their journey due to a technical issue with one of our aircraft.

“The safety of our customers and crew is always our top priority and we would never operate a flight unless it was safe to do so.”