An airline will tell you your flight is delayed. It will tell you the new departure time, and if things are bad enough it will hand you a voucher for a sandwich. What it will not do is tell you that you are owed a fixed sum of money, that the sum has nothing to do with what you paid for the ticket, and that you have years rather than days to ask for it.
None of this is hidden. It is written into law on both sides of the Channel. It is simply not in the airline’s interest to mention it, so most people never claim.
What a delay is worth
The compensation is a fixed amount set by distance, not a refund and not a proportion of your fare. A 40 euro budget ticket and a 400 euro flexible ticket on the same delayed aircraft are worth exactly the same.
| Flight distance | Under EU rules | Under UK rules |
|---|---|---|
| 1,500 km or less | €250 | £220 |
| 1,500 to 3,500 km, and intra-EU over 1,500 km | €400 | £350 |
| Over 3,500 km, arriving 3 to 4 hours late | €300 | £260 |
| Over 3,500 km, arriving more than 4 hours late | €600 | £520 |
Note the long-haul split. Arrive three and a half hours late from New York and the figure is the lower one. Arrive four hours and one minute late and it roughly doubles. That half hour is worth more than most of the tickets on the aircraft.
Three hours, measured at the wrong end
The threshold is three hours, and the single most useful thing to understand is where it is measured. It is not the departure delay. It is how late you reach your final destination.
That distinction decides a lot of claims. A flight that pushes back two hours late and then makes up time in the air may land inside the window and be worth nothing. A flight that leaves only slightly late, misses a slot and then sits on a taxiway can cross three hours on arrival and become a claim. People check the departure board, see a modest delay, and never think about it again.
On a connecting itinerary booked as one ticket, the distance is measured between the first and last airport, and arriving late at the connection point does not count on its own. What matters is when you reach the end. Book the legs separately and you lose that protection entirely, because there is no single journey for the rules to attach to.
The excuse that usually is not one
Airlines do not have to pay when the disruption was caused by extraordinary circumstances. This is the clause every rejection letter leans on, and it is narrower than the letters imply.
Genuine examples include air traffic management decisions, political instability, adverse weather and security risks. What generally does not qualify is a technical problem with the aircraft, or a strike by the airline’s own staff. Those are treated as part of running an airline. A strike by someone else, such as air traffic control, may qualify.
Two details are worth holding onto. The burden of proof sits with the airline: it has to show both the link between the circumstance and your delay, and that the delay could not have been avoided with all reasonable measures. And a first rejection is not a ruling. It is one party to a dispute stating its own position.
Food and a hotel are a separate right
The right to care is not the same thing as compensation, and it is easy to conflate them. Care is owed while you wait regardless of whose fault the delay is. Even where extraordinary circumstances cancel your right to compensation, they do not cancel this.
- Meals and refreshments in proportion to the wait, plus two free calls or emails. This begins after two hours on short flights and later on longer ones.
- A hotel and transport to it if the delay pushes departure to the following day.
- A refund of the ticket if the departure delay reaches five hours and you decide not to travel, including a flight back to your original departure point where relevant.
- Your own receipts if the airline provides none of this and you pay yourself. Reasonable, necessary expenses can be claimed back, which makes keeping receipts worth the effort at the time.
Cancellations work on a calendar
A cancellation is governed by notice rather than hours. Told more than 14 days before departure, you are owed no compensation. Told less than 14 days before, you generally are.
Inside that window the airline can reduce or remove the liability by rerouting you close to your original times. Between 7 and 14 days’ notice, an alternative that departs no more than two hours early and arrives less than four hours late removes the entitlement. Under 7 days’ notice the margins tighten to one hour early and under two hours late. If the replacement they offered was far worse than that, the cancellation is still worth claiming on.
Claiming it
- Write down the arrival time. Not the departure delay, the moment the doors opened. Photograph the arrivals board if you can.
- Keep the boarding pass and every receipt from the delay. These are the whole evidential basis later.
- Claim directly with the airline first. Most have a form. You do not need an agency, and an agency will take a substantial cut of a fixed sum.
- Expect a rejection citing extraordinary circumstances. Ask them to state what the circumstance was and why it could not have been avoided. Vagueness at this stage is informative.
- Escalate if the answer is thin. Both the UK and EU countries have designated bodies and dispute schemes for exactly this, and using one costs you nothing.
This is general information rather than legal advice, and the rules that apply depend on where you flew from, where you flew to and which airline operated it. Check your own route against the current guidance before relying on any figure here.
Common questions
Does a cheap ticket get less?
No. The sum is fixed by distance and delay, not by fare. This is why the compensation on a short budget flight can exceed what the ticket cost, and it is the single most counterintuitive part of the rules.
Do I have to accept a voucher?
No. Airlines frequently offer credit worth more than the cash entitlement, because vouchers expire, carry conditions and keep the money inside the airline. If you would rather have the cash, say so and decline the voucher.
Should I use a claims company?
Rarely worth it. They typically take a large percentage of a fixed, predetermined amount for submitting a form you could submit yourself. They earn their fee on genuinely contested cases that go the distance, which is a small minority.
What if the delay was years ago?
Very possibly still claimable. The window for bringing a claim is measured in years rather than months and varies by country. It is worth checking old disrupted flights before assuming they are too old, particularly long-haul ones where the sums are largest.
Does travel insurance cover this instead?
They cover different things. Compensation is a statutory entitlement from the airline for the disruption itself. Insurance covers consequential losses, such as a missed hotel night. You may be able to claim both, and an insurer will often ask what the airline has already paid.
Leave a Reply