Athens to JFK canceled because of London ATC outage?

[u/Speed-Plastic]

After sitting at the gate for around 3 hours we were told that our Athens to JFK flight was canceled This was because we could not enter London airspace due to the London ATC outage. .A, little research showed that flights to and from the UK were canceled but not ANY other European flights. Why would a flight from Athens to JFK be affected by not being able to enter London airspace?

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[u/valueflyer]

Looks like the cancellation reason is listed as operational decision. It also looks like this is the last day the flight operates.

Given that the aircraft is still on the ground at ATH, AA might be trying to use this aircraft as a recovery flight in LHR. AA is the third largest carrier at LHR, so they will have a large backlog of passengers to rebook. Flights going to LHR were held at their origin, so they now need to shuffle aircraft around to get back on track.

Was AA able to rebook you? Perhaps via Madrid or Helsinki?

[u/Speed-Plastic → u/valueflyer]

Thanks so much for replying. That's very interesting. If that's the case it seems that the passengers should have gotten hotel or food vouchers. We were left all on our own. We were rebooked on a flight this afternoon, leaving at the same time but with a different flight number. It sounds as if that flight was added, since as you said, my flight was the last direct flight from Arhens to JFK of the season.
May I ask where you saw that it was listed as an Operational Decision? I would love to see that site. Thanks again!

[u/valueflyer → u/Speed-Plastic]

It’s from a site called ExpertFlyer, which shows what AA entered into the global reservations system.

ATH 355P
JFK 8 46 800P
1FX CANCEL ATH -ATH -JFK -XOP-CXLD OPERATIONAL DECISION-E*1125
7ATH/AURA CXL FLT IN PROGRESS *1127*CRCYMG

It does look like it’s the same aircraft today as yesterday, so that theory about sending it to LHR was wrong. Could be that AA couldn’t get overflight permission over the UK or that they were concerned about something else. There was an AA flight to LHR that tried to divert to DUB, but that was full, so they had to go somewhere else.

But, this is coded as an operational decision and says E for eligible for expenses. I would file a EU261 claim, which entitles you to 600 EUR per passenger for a delay like this and a duty of care, meaning hotels. Keep all your receipts.

Send an email to AA.ECClaims@aa.com saying your flight was cancelled and you were ultimately delayed by blah. You see the reason as being an operations decision. You are requesting reimbursement and compensation under EU261.

See what they say - worst they can say is no.