How to Claim Under EC261 (and When You Can't)

EC261 is unusual among consumer protections in that it pays a fixed sum without your having to prove any loss at all. That makes it valuable, and it also makes it heavily defended. Airlines have refined their refusals over two decades, and the refusals mostly work, because most claims arrive without having checked the three things the airline is about to check.

Question one: does the regulation cover this flight

EC261 applies to flights departing from an airport in the EU or EEA, on any airline of any nationality, and to flights arriving into the EU or EEA operated by an EU carrier. The UK operates its own retained version, usually called UK261, on the same architecture with amounts set in pounds: departures from a UK airport on any carrier, and arrivals into the UK on a UK or EU carrier.

Neither your nationality nor the country you bought the ticket in has any bearing. The departure airport does most of the work and the operating carrier does the rest.

One detail catches people on codeshares: the obligation sits with the OPERATING carrier, whose aircraft and crew flew you, not necessarily the airline whose code is on the ticket. Check the boarding pass for the line saying operated by, and address the claim there. Claims sent to the marketing carrier get forwarded slowly or not at all.

Question two: did one of the four covered things happen

• Cancellation, where you were notified less than 14 days before the scheduled departure.
• Denied boarding against your will, usually because the flight was oversold.
• Long delay, meaning arrival at your final destination three hours or more late. Departure delay is not the test, and details are in Flight Delay Compensation: What You're Actually Owed.
• Downgrade, where you were moved to a lower cabin than the one you paid for. This is reimbursement of a percentage of the ticket price for the affected leg, not fixed compensation.

What is not covered matters just as much. Baggage that is lost, delayed or damaged falls outside EC261 entirely, governed instead by the Montreal Convention and the airline's conditions, with deadlines short enough to end most claims before they start. See Lost, Delayed or Damaged Baggage: The Deadlines That Decide It. A schedule change made months ahead is not a cancellation for these purposes, and neither is a flight you missed.

Question three: was the cause within the airline's control

No compensation is owed where the airline proves extraordinary circumstances that could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken. In practice: severe weather, air traffic control restrictions, security incidents, political instability. Technical faults arising in the normal course of operating an aircraft are generally not extraordinary, which is why so many technical refusals collapse when challenged.

The burden is on the airline, and it has three things to establish, not one. That the circumstance existed. That it took all reasonable measures anyway, including reserve aircraft, standby crew and re-routing on other carriers. And that the circumstance affected your flight rather than the network generally. Most refusal letters address none of those and simply assert a category, which is what the substantiation demand in Flight Delay Compensation: What You're Actually Owed is built to attack.

Answer this one honestly to yourself first. If the airport was closed by fog you are not owed compensation, and demanding it is not a negotiating position, it is a self-inflicted wound. Claim the refund, the re-routing and the duty of care, all of which remain owed.

The amounts, and the traps inside them

• Broadly EUR 250 for flights under 1,500km.
• Broadly EUR 400 for flights between 1,500km and 3,500km.
• Broadly EUR 600 for flights over 3,500km.
• UK claims are set in pounds at the equivalent tiers.

Distance runs from the departure airport to your final destination on the booking, as the crow flies, not the length of the leg that failed. Two reductions exist before you name a figure: in every distance band the amount can be reduced where the re-routing brought you in within a defined shorter window, and on cancellations inside 14 days an airline that re-routed you close enough to the original times may owe nothing. Verify the current thresholds. A claim for the wrong amount invites a counter-offer at the right one; a claim for an amount not owed at all invites a refusal of everything.

Compensation is not the refund, and the choice is yours

On a cancellation the regulation gives you a choice, and it is yours rather than the airline's: a refund of the unused portion of the ticket within a set period, or re-routing to your destination at the earliest opportunity, or re-routing at a later date that suits you, subject to availability. Whichever you take, compensation, if it is owed, is owed on top.

Airlines routinely offer one and describe it as settling the other. If a letter says they have refunded the fare and consider the matter closed, reply in one line that the refund is not compensation and the compensation claim remains open under its reference. Treat vouchers with suspicion: a voucher is not a refund unless you chose it, and accepting one can be treated as settling the claim.

Duty of care, which nobody claims and everybody is owed

While you are waiting, the airline owes you care whatever caused the disruption. Weather does not switch it off. It covers meals and refreshments proportionate to the wait, a means of communication, and accommodation plus transfers where an overnight becomes necessary. If they provide none of it, buy what you reasonably need, keep the receipts, and claim it as a separate line from the compensation. On a two-night disruption it is often the larger sum, and it is owed even when the compensation claim is hopeless.

Subject: Duty of care reimbursement, [AIRLINE] [FLIGHT NUMBER], [DATE], booking [BOOKING REF]

Where to file, and in what order

Order is not a formality here. Get it wrong and you lose weeks to rejections that have nothing to do with the merits.

1. The airline's own claim form. Not email. Airlines process passenger rights claims through a dedicated form that issues a reference number, and correspondence arriving outside that system frequently never reaches a case handler. Screenshot the confirmation.
2. The agent or booking site, in parallel, if you did not book direct. They cannot pay statutory compensation, but if a refund is also in play they are usually the ones sitting on it.
3. Escalation above first-line customer relations at day 15, with a written demand that any refusal be substantiated.
4. The ADR scheme or national enforcement body, once the airline has given its final answer or the scheme's waiting period has elapsed.

One accuracy point that will save you an embarrassing phone call. A card chargeback is a poor fit for statutory compensation. You are not disputing the charge for the ticket, you are claiming a separate entitlement that arose afterwards, and issuers will say so. Chargeback belongs to an unpaid refund, not to EC261 money. Using it in the wrong place is precisely the sort of overreach that gets a whole file downgraded, and the right use of it is set out in When the Airline Agreed and the Money Never Came.

The ADR and enforcement body route

In the UK, most airlines belong to an alternative dispute resolution scheme, AviationADR and CEDR being the usual ones, whose decisions bind the member airline. It is free to the passenger. Where an airline is not a member, the Civil Aviation Authority handles the complaint instead. In the EU, the route is the National Enforcement Body of the country the flight departed from, or for a non-EU departure on an EU carrier, the country of arrival. Each member state runs its own body and its own form.

All of them reject a case that has not been to the airline first. Most require either the airline's final response or a stated waiting period, commonly around eight weeks in the UK. The sequencing is a filing requirement, not politeness. Note too that some schemes set their own deadline for referring a case after the airline's final answer, a separate and much shorter clock than the general claim window.

Subject: Air passenger rights complaint, [AIRLINE] [FLIGHT NUMBER], [DATE], claim [CLAIM REFERENCE]

The claim companies

Firms offering to claim for you typically take a quarter to a half once VAT and escalation fees are counted of a fixed sum, sometimes more if the case escalates, for submitting a form you can submit yourself. The airline's channel, the enforcement bodies and the ADR schemes are all free to the passenger, and signing a mandate can mean the airline will only deal with the company. A fair trade for your time, a poor one for your money.

Time limits

The window to bring a claim is set by national law, not by the regulation, and it varies enormously: as little as one year in some member states, six in others. Do not assume you have years. Check the limit for the country whose law applies before you do anything else. Confirm the limit that applies to you rather than trusting a figure from a guide, this one included. And if a refund rather than compensation is at stake, your card dispute window will expire long before any of these. That short window is usually the real deadline on your calendar.

When you cannot claim under EC261

• The flight neither departed the EU, EEA or UK, nor arrived into the EU or EEA on an EU carrier, nor into the UK on a UK or EU carrier.
• You arrived at your final destination less than three hours late.
• You were told about the cancellation 14 days or more in advance.
• The airline can genuinely evidence extraordinary circumstances and reasonable measures.
• The complaint is about baggage, seating, service, food, or a fee, none of which the regulation touches.
• You were denied travel on documentation, health, safety or security grounds, or you arrived after check-in closed.
• You accepted a voucher or a settlement in writing and are now trying to reopen it.

The Flight Desk at /flights assembles the claim, the substantiation demand and the scheme complaint around your own flight numbers and reference numbers, with the dates already worked out.