Flight Delay Compensation: What You're Actually Owed

Almost every rejected delay claim fails for one of two reasons. The passenger measured the wrong thing, or claimed for a disruption the airline never had to pay for. Both are avoidable in about five minutes of checking, and those five minutes are most of what this guide is for.

Arrival, not departure

It is the most expensive mistake in consumer aviation. A passenger sees a four-hour departure delay, assumes 600 euros, writes a confident letter, and gets a one-line refusal explaining that the aircraft made most of it up in the air. The airline is right, and the first letter has spent the credibility needed for everything after it.

Arrival is generally taken as the moment the doors open and passengers are free to leave, not the moment the wheels touch the runway. On a marginal case those minutes are the case, so if you are anywhere near the three-hour line, note the door time yourself on the day.

Final destination means the last airport on your booking, connections included. If a delay on the first leg made you miss the second on the same ticket, what counts is how late you reached the end of the itinerary, which is often far more than the delay at the original gate. If the connection was on a separate booking, that is a different contract and the delaying airline owes nothing for it.

First, does any compensation rule cover your flight

There is no global right to be paid for a late flight. Whether a fixed sum exists at all depends almost entirely on where you departed from and who operated the aircraft.

The EU, the EEA and the UK

EC261, and the retained UK equivalent usually called UK261, is the strongest lever an air passenger has anywhere in the world. They are two separate regimes now, and the scope tests differ. EC261 covers departures from an EU or EEA airport on any airline of any nationality, and arrivals into the EU or EEA operated by an EU carrier. UK261 covers departures from a UK airport on any airline, and arrivals into the UK operated by a UK or EU carrier. Since Brexit a UK carrier is not an EU carrier, so a British airline flying between two points that are neither UK nor EU is covered by neither regime.

• Madrid to Bogota on a Colombian airline: covered, because it departed an EU airport.
• New York to Paris on a US airline: not covered, because it neither departed the EU nor was operated by an EU carrier.
• New York to Paris on a French airline: covered, because it arrived in the EU on an EU carrier.
• Bangkok to Sydney on a Thai airline: not covered by EC261 at all, whatever your nationality or where you bought the ticket.

Your own citizenship is irrelevant. Where you bought the ticket is irrelevant. The departure airport and the operating carrier decide it.

The United States

There is no statutory compensation for delay in the United States. None. Any site telling a passenger otherwise is either confused or selling something, and repeating it to an airline is the fastest way to have your whole file dismissed as boilerplate.

What US rules do give you is a refund. When the airline cancels or significantly changes a flight and you decline the alternative, you are owed your money back to the original payment method, whether or not the fare was sold as refundable, and a travel voucher is not a refund unless you chose one. Separately, involuntary denied boarding on an oversold flight carries defined compensation calculated as a multiple of the one-way fare and subject to a cap, covered in Bumped Off an Overbooked Flight: What to Do at the Gate. Route: the airline, then the US Department of Transportation's aviation consumer protection process.

Canada

The Air Passenger Protection Regulations set compensation for delay and cancellation within the airline's control, on a sliding scale by delay length and carrier size, plus standards of treatment during the wait. Claim to the airline first, which has a defined window to respond, then the Canadian Transportation Agency.

Everywhere else

Outside those regimes you have the airline's conditions of carriage and, for international journeys, the Montreal Convention, which makes a carrier liable for damage caused by delay subject to a limit and to a defence that it took all reasonable measures. That is a claim for proven, documented loss rather than a fixed sum, so it lives or dies on receipts: the missed hotel night, the rebooked onward ticket, the paid tour you never took.

What the European rules actually pay

• 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.
• The UK scheme mirrors this with amounts set in pounds.

Distance is measured between the departure airport and your final destination on the booking, as the crow flies, not by the length of the individual leg that went wrong. A passenger delayed on a short first hop of a long-haul itinerary is usually in the top band, which surprises people in a good way.

Two honest cautions. In EVERY distance band, not just on long-haul, the airline can pay a reduced amount — broadly half — where its re-routing got you in within a defined shorter window of the original arrival. And on cancellations, even inside the 14-day period, an airline that re-routed you close enough to your original departure and arrival times may owe nothing at all, with the tolerance tightening the nearer to departure the notice came. Check the exact figures before you name one.

One thing to be completely clear about, because airlines conflate them constantly: this is compensation, and it is owed IN ADDITION to any refund or re-routing. Being put on the next flight is not compensation. Getting your fare back is not compensation. If a letter offers you one and describes it as settling the other, say so in writing.

The three triggers

1. A cancellation notified to you less than 14 days before the scheduled departure.
2. Denied boarding against your will, which is a claim in its own right and generally the strongest of the three.
3. Arrival at your final destination three hours or more after the scheduled arrival time.

A downgrade, being sold a seat at the front and flown at the back, sits outside these three. It is dealt with by reimbursing a percentage of the ticket price for the affected leg rather than by fixed compensation, and the percentages vary by distance, so look them up rather than assuming the whole fare comes back.

The exemption, stated as loudly as the entitlement

Compensation is not owed where the airline proves the disruption was caused by extraordinary circumstances that could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken. In practice that means severe weather, air traffic control restrictions, security incidents, and political instability.

Technical and mechanical faults arising in the ordinary course of operating an aircraft are generally NOT extraordinary, and this is the single most productive fact in the guide. Airlines refuse on technical grounds routinely, and those refusals routinely do not survive being challenged. A strike by the airline's own staff is generally treated as within its control; a strike by air traffic control or airport ground handlers generally is not. That distinction is contested and has moved over time, so verify before you commit to a number.

Two further conditions matter, because most refusals fail on them. The airline must show it took all reasonable measures, meaning what it did about a replacement aircraft, standby crew or re-routing on another carrier. And it must show the circumstance affected this flight, not merely that there was weather somewhere in its network. A knock-on delay inherited from an earlier rotation is not automatically excused.

If your flight was genuinely cancelled in a storm, you are not owed compensation, and demanding 600 euros for it will be refused in one line, after which everything else you send reads as opportunistic. Claim the refund, the re-routing and the duty of care instead. All three survive the weather.

Duty of care survives everything

This is the part passengers most often leave on the table. Where you are stuck, the airline owes you care regardless of what caused the disruption. Extraordinary circumstances do not switch it off. It is entirely separate from compensation and on a two-night disruption it is frequently the larger number.

• Meals and refreshments proportionate to the length of the wait.
• A means of communication, historically phone calls, in practice emails and messages.
• Hotel accommodation and transfers between the airport and the hotel where an overnight stay becomes necessary.

If the airline provides none of it, and at scale they often cannot, buy what you reasonably need and keep every receipt. Reasonable is the operative word. A room near the airport and a normal dinner get reimbursed. A suite and a tasting menu give them something to argue about, and arguing is what they are good at.

Build the file before you write anything

• The booking confirmation and e-ticket, showing the fare paid and every flight number.
• Boarding passes, or the airline app's record of the flights you actually took.
• The cancellation or delay notification, screenshotted, including the time it arrived. The notice date decides the 14-day question.
• Whatever the airline said the cause was, in writing where possible. Gate announcements are worth writing down verbatim, with the time.
• The ACTUAL arrival time at your final destination. This is the claim.
• Receipts for meals, transport, accommodation and any onward travel you had to rebook.
• Every message in both directions, with timestamps, including any web form confirmation.
• The line on your card statement, and the merchant name exactly as it appears.

For the arrival time, the airline's app history is usually the easiest source, then the destination airport's arrivals record and independent flight tracking. Capture it the same week. By month four you will be arguing about a figure neither of you can still produce.

Where the claim actually goes, which is not an inbox

Airlines process passenger rights claims through a dedicated web form that issues a reference number, and largely ignore email sent to customer service. This is workflow rather than conspiracy: a claim arriving outside the system is never assigned to anyone. Use the form.

1. Find the airline's own claim page, whatever it is called: compensation claim, EU261 claim, refund request. It must be the airline's site, not a third-party claim service.
2. Paste the letter into the free-text field. If the field is short, put the reference block in the box and attach the full letter as a PDF.
3. Record the claim or case reference the form issues. Every later letter quotes it in the first three lines.
4. Screenshot the submission confirmation. Proof of the date is what makes your deadline real rather than rhetorical.

Sequencing matters more here than in any other consumer dispute. ADR schemes and national enforcement bodies reject a case that has not been to the airline first, so filing everywhere on day one buys you two rejections and a lost fortnight. The order is set out in How to Claim Under EC261 (and When You Can't).

The calendar

Escalation is time-triggered, not response-triggered. Their silence never pauses your clock, because silence is the strategy. Write these dates down before you send anything.

1. Day 1. The claim, through the airline's own form, with a 7-day deadline written as a calendar date.
2. Day 8. Parallel deployment. Second notice to the airline quoting the missed date, plus the agent or booking site if you did not book direct, plus a note to your card issuer establishing your dispute deadline.
3. Day 15. Escalation above first-line customer relations, a written demand that they substantiate any extraordinary-circumstances refusal, and, only if what is outstanding is a refund rather than statutory compensation, formal notice of a card dispute naming the filing date.
4. Day 22. Execute. File the dispute on the date you named, if a refund rather than statutory compensation is what is outstanding.
5. Day 45, or the eight-week mark if later. The ADR scheme or national enforcement body, once the airline has issued its final answer or the scheme's waiting period has run.

Subject: EC261/UK261 compensation claim, [AIRLINE] [FLIGHT NUMBER], [DATE OF FLIGHT], booking [BOOKING REF]

When they refuse on extraordinary circumstances

Most refusals are a single asserted sentence with no evidence attached, sent because most passengers stop there. The airline carries the burden of proving the exemption applies, so the correct response is not indignation. It is a short, specific request for the proof, addressed to the claim reference, with a date on it.

Subject: Request for substantiation, claim [CLAIM REFERENCE], [AIRLINE] [FLIGHT NUMBER], [DATE OF FLIGHT]

The people who want a third of it

No win, no fee claim companies typically take a quarter to a half once VAT and escalation fees are counted of a fixed statutory sum for sending the letter you are now holding, and some take more again if the case escalates. The airline's form, the enforcement bodies and the ADR schemes are all free to the passenger. Signing a mandate can also mean the airline stops dealing with you directly. If you genuinely have no time, they are a reasonable trade. If you have twenty minutes, they are an expensive one.

When you are not owed compensation

• You arrived at your final destination less than three hours late, however grim the day was.
• The cancellation was notified 14 days or more before departure.
• The airline can genuinely evidence extraordinary circumstances and that it took all reasonable measures.
• Your flight neither departed an EU, EEA or UK airport, nor arrived into the EU or EEA on an EU carrier, nor into the UK on a UK or EU carrier, and no local regime applies.
• You missed the flight, arrived after check-in closed, or were refused travel on documentation, health, safety or security grounds.
• You volunteered to give up your seat in exchange for a benefit, which trades the fixed entitlement for whatever you negotiated.
• Your connection was on a separate booking, in which case the delaying airline owes you nothing for the flight it did not sell you.

In several of those situations the refund and the duty of care are still owed. Losing the compensation claim does not mean losing the money, and the routes for a refund the airline agreed to and never paid are in When the Airline Agreed and the Money Never Came.

If you would rather not assemble the reference block five times, the Flight Desk at /flights builds these letters pre-filled with your flight numbers, your arrival delay and your deadlines already calculated.