An airline cancels your flight. You go to claim and the airline tells you to take it up with the website you booked through. The website says it is only an agent and the airline holds the money. Both can be true at once, and neither reduces what you are owed by a penny.
The short answer
The operating airline owes you the compensation, the meals, the hotel and the rerouting, whoever sold you the ticket. It cannot push that onto an agent, and it stays liable even when it told the agent two weeks out and the agent never passed it on. The refund is the part that jams: in Europe the duty sits with the airline while the cash sits with the agent that took your card payment. United States rules are better on that point, putting the refund duty on whoever took the money, with a deadline.
| What you are claiming | EU and UK | United States |
|---|---|---|
| Cash compensation for the cancellation | Operating air carrier only. EUR 250, 400 or 600 by distance. In the UK, £220, £350 or £520 | No federal right to compensation. The federal rules cover refunds |
| Refund of the fare | Operating air carrier, within seven days | Whoever was merchant of record. If that is the agent, the agent owes it |
| Meals, hotel, transfers while you wait | Operating air carrier | No federal duty. Check the carrier’s own commitments |
| Rerouting to your destination | Operating air carrier | Not mandated. You take the refund instead |
| The agent’s booking or service fee | Outside the regulation. A contract question | Refundable unless it was disclosed up front and bought more than payment processing |
The agent never told me. Does that let the airline off?
No, and this is the most useful thing to know before you write to anyone. Under Article 5(1)(c) of Regulation 261/2004 you lose compensation only if you were informed at least two weeks before departure. The Court of Justice has twice held that telling the agent is not telling you.
In Krijgsman (C-302/16, 11 May 2017) the Court ruled that the operating carrier must pay compensation where the cancellation “was not communicated to the passenger at least two weeks before the scheduled time of departure, including in the case where the air carrier, at least two weeks before that time, communicated that information to the travel agent via whom the contract for carriage had been entered into with the passenger concerned and the passenger had not been informed of that cancellation by that agent within that period”.
Airhelp v Laudamotion (C-263/20, 21 December 2021) confirmed it and closed the obvious workaround, and the Azurair judgments handed down the same day applied the point to a flight the airline brought forward rather than cancelled. The Court held at paragraph 43 that if the carrier “communicates solely with the intermediary, that is not in itself sufficient for a finding that communication to the passenger has been made”. It also settled who has to prove what: Article 5(4) puts the burden of proving whether and when you were told on the airline, not on you.
There is one carve-out. Paragraph 44 says the presumption can work against you if you expressly authorised the intermediary to receive the carrier’s messages and the carrier knew it. So the question deciding many claims is whose email address is on the booking. If the agent substituted its own, that is the agent’s choice, not your authorisation.
Article 13 lets the airline recover from the agent afterwards. That is the airline’s problem, and it happens after it has paid you.
Who is actually holding my money?
Look at your card statement. The name on the charge is the merchant of record, and that is the business sitting on your fare. Most large booking sites take payment themselves and remit to the airline later, which is why an airline can say, accurately, that it never had your money.
Europe does not resolve that split. Article 8(1)(a) says you are owed “reimbursement within seven days, by the means provided for in Article 7(3), of the full cost of the ticket at the price at which it was bought”, and the duty falls on the operating carrier. The regulation says nothing about intermediaries, and the Commission’s 2016 interpretative guidelines do not raise them in the reimbursement section either. In practice the airline refunds the agent, which then decides how fast to pass it on. Claim from the airline, where the duty is, and chase the agent in parallel, where the cash is.
The United States handles this properly. Under 14 CFR 399.80(l) it is an unfair and deceptive practice for a ticket agent to fail to refund the fare when it was the merchant of record, and the deadline is stated: seven business days for a credit card purchase, twenty calendar days for cash, cheque or debit. The airline cannot stall the agent either. 14 CFR 260.6(d) requires the carrier to tell the agent “without delay” whether the passenger is eligible, and 260.6(e) requires a carrier holding your funds to transfer them to the agent promptly. If a US-touching flight is cancelled and the agent tells you it is waiting on the airline, those two provisions are the ones to quote.
What does the agent itself owe me?
Whatever its own terms promised, which is usually less than people assume. Agents contract to make and administer the booking, not to fly you anywhere. A Financial Ombudsman Service decision from 16 March 2022 (DRN-3177554) shows how that plays out on a card claim: the ombudsman treated the travel agent as the supplier, found the agent had “contractually agree[d] to handle such requests on behalf of its customer, but that any such entitlement to a refund will be governed by the terms and conditions of the airline”, and then asked only whether the agent had broken its own promise. The airline’s conduct was not the test.
So against the agent you can argue it failed to pass on a notice, failed to submit the refund, or sat on money it had received. You cannot argue the flight was cancelled, because the agent never promised it would not be. Our guide to chargebacks and Section 75 covers which card route survives an intermediary in the chain, and that answer is narrower than most people expect.
Where these claims go wrong
- Claiming compensation from the agent. It is not owed by the agent and never was. Address it to the operating carrier, which on a codeshare is the airline whose crew flies the aircraft, not the one on your booking reference.
- Accepting the agent’s “we will handle this” and waiting. Put your own claim to the airline the same day and tell the agent you have done so.
- Letting the agent accept a voucher on your behalf. A voucher extinguishes the refund. In the US, 14 CFR 260.7 says a carrier must not treat you as having accepted one unless you affirmatively agreed.
- Ignoring the markup. Article 8(1)(a) says reimbursement at the price at which the ticket was bought, but an airline will normally refund only the fare it holds. Any agent markup above that is a contract claim against the agent. We found no Court of Justice ruling deciding the gap.
- Assuming the agent’s fee comes back. In the US it can be retained only where it was clearly disclosed up front, charged per passenger, and paid for something beyond processing the payment for a flight you found yourself. In the UK and EU it is a matter of the agent’s terms.
- Treating two tickets as one journey. If the agent stitched separate bookings into one itinerary, the protections across the join mostly disappear. That trap is covered in what you are owed on a missed connection.
Frequently asked questions
The airline says to contact the agent. Do I have to?
Not for compensation or care. Article 5(1)(c) places those on the operating carrier and no step in the regulation requires you to go through a seller first. For a refund, ask the agent too, because it may hold the cash. The UK CAA’s advice on agent problems is to take the complaint up with the company concerned first, so do both.
The agent emailed me nine days before departure. Am I still owed compensation?
Probably yes. Nine days is inside the two-week window, so compensation is due unless the airline offered rerouting departing no more than two hours early and arriving under four hours late. That is the Article 5(1)(c)(ii) test, and the airline has to prove it met it.
Does it matter that the agent is registered outside the EU or UK?
Not for compensation. Regulation 261/2004 attaches to the flight and the operating carrier, not to where the ticket was sold. It matters for suing the agent over its own conduct, and for whether a card claim is worth starting.
My booking was flight plus hotel. Does that change anything?
Possibly all of it. A flight sold with accommodation can be a package, which puts a different and generally stronger set of duties on the organiser. Article 3(6) preserves package rights separately. See the rights gap between a package and a self-assembled trip.
The agent has gone quiet and my flight is tomorrow.
Stop waiting. Contact the operating carrier with your ticket number, the thirteen-digit one starting with the airline’s three-digit code, not the agent’s reference. The airline can see and act on the ticket whoever sold it. Ask for rerouting under Article 8(1)(b) in writing, and keep any refusal.
Sources: Regulation (EC) No 261/2004, Articles 3, 5, 7, 8 and 13, EUR-Lex. Judgment in C-302/16 Krijgsman and C-263/20 Airhelp v Laudamotion, Court of Justice of the European Union. Commission Interpretative Guidelines 2016/C 214/04, section 4.2. 14 CFR Part 260 and 14 CFR 399.80(l), eCFR. UK CAA guidance on cancellations and problems with a travel agent. Financial Ombudsman Service final decision DRN-3177554, 16 March 2022.
Researched from primary sources and checked September 2026. General information, not advice.
