The first flight ate the second.

Everything in this claim turns on a single question — one booking, or two — and most passengers never check.

Read this first

One booking, or two — check before you claim

A single booking means one reference covering both flights, usually with bags checked through. Two separate tickets — even on the same airline, even sold together by a booking site as a self-transfer — are two contracts, and the first airline generally owes you nothing for the second flight beyond the delay to its own leg. Find your confirmation and count the booking references before writing anything, because a claim built on the wrong answer collapses at the first reply.

What you are owed

Re-routing to your final destination

On a single booking, the connection is the airline's to honour: it gets you to the destination on the ticket, on the next available flight, without selling you a new one. Missing the onward leg because their first flight was late is their failure, not a no-show.

Compensation measured at the final destination

Where EC261/UK261 applies, the three-hour clock is read at your FINAL destination, not at the connecting airport. A forty-minute delay into the hub that lands you four hours late at journey's end is a claim, at the usual amounts — broadly EUR 250 / EUR 400 / EUR 600, with distance measured across the whole journey.

Duty of care while you wait

Meals, communication, and a hotel with transfers if the next available flight is tomorrow. Owed whatever the cause, and worth claiming with receipts even where compensation is not.

How they will refuse, and what answers it

“Your first flight arrived with only a minor delay.”

The measure is when you reached the final destination on the booking, not the hub. Ask them to state the arrival time at the final destination on which they relied.

“You failed to board the onward flight.”

Because their aircraft delivered you after the gate closed. On a single booking that is the airline's delay wearing your name — state the arrival time of the first flight and the departure time of the second, and let the timestamps argue.

“The connection time you booked was too short.”

The airline built and sold that connection as one itinerary; a connection they offered is a connection they considered makeable. If you assembled the flights yourself on separate tickets this refusal has force — which is exactly why the one-booking question comes first.

Gather this before you write

The booking confirmation showing both flights under one reference
Your ACTUAL arrival time at the final destination, and where you got it
The originally scheduled arrival time at the final destination
The arrival time of the late first flight and the departure time of the missed one
Rebooking messages, and anything the airline said about the cause
Receipts for meals, transport and any overnight the misconnection forced

Now make them answer.

Tell us what happened in your own words. We write the claim, set the deadlines, and email each escalation on the day it is due — and we will not demand money the rules do not owe, because a claim that overreaches gets a one-line refusal.