If your flight was delayed by three hours or more, cancelled at short notice, or you were bumped off it, European law may owe you between €250 and €600. In cash. Not a voucher, not air miles.
Most never claim it. Airlines need not mention it at the gate, and the industry knows most eligible passengers go home. Or skip the reading: the compensation checker prices your route and drafts the claim letter. It runs in your browser; we never see your details.
The short answer
You are owed compensation if all four are true:
- You arrived three or more hours late. The regulation names only cancellations and long delays; the three hour line comes from Sturgeon v Condor (C-402/07). Arrival is the moment a door opens, not touchdown, per Germanwings v Henning (C-452/13). Denied boarding and cancellation inside 14 days count too.
- The flight left an EU airport, or arrived in the EU on an EU airline.
- The cause was something the airline controls. Not weather, air traffic control or a security alert.
- You had a confirmed booking and checked in on time.
Compensation is separate from a refund. If the flight was cancelled, you get both.
How much compensation are you owed?
The amount depends on distance, not what you paid. A €40 fare and a €400 fare on the same route are owed the same.
| Flight distance | Compensation |
|---|---|
| Up to 1,500 km | €250 |
| 1,500 to 3,500 km, or over 1,500 km within the EU | €400 |
| Over 3,500 km | €600 |
Article 7(4) measures distance by the great circle route, a straight line from origin to final destination rather than the path flown. London to Malaga is about 1,650 km, putting it in the €400 band rather than €250.
One catch, and not only on long-haul. Article 7(2) halves the payment if they re-route you and you land within two hours of schedule up to 1,500 km, three on a medium flight, four on anything longer. It bites hardest on long-haul: a delay under three hours earns nothing anyway. A re-routed long-haul landing three and a half hours late is the standard case: €300, not €600.
Does a cancelled flight pay the same?
Yes. Same €250, €400 and €600 bands, same distance test. A cancellation adds a notice test and a choice.
| When they told you | Compensation? |
|---|---|
| 14 or more days before departure | No |
| 7 to 13 days before | Yes, unless re-routed to depart within 2 hours and arrive within 4 hours of the original |
| Under 7 days | Yes, unless re-routed to depart within 1 hour and arrive within 2 hours |
The same table decides a schedule change, because moving a departure more than an hour earlier is a cancellation in law, not a change. Article 8 then gives you a choice: a full refund, re-routing at the earliest opportunity, or re-booking for a date that suits you. Your choice, not theirs, and the refund is due within seven days, whoever sold the ticket, including when an agent never passed the cancellation on.
What counts as the airline’s fault?
This is where most claims are won or lost. You still get paid when the cause was:
- A technical, mechanical or maintenance fault, even an unexpected one
- A strike by the airline’s own staff
- Crew turning up late, or running out of legal duty hours
- Overbooking
- A knock-on delay from the aircraft’s earlier flight
The technical fault point matters most, because it is the excuse airlines reach for most often. Two Court of Justice rulings settled it. Wallentin-Hermann v Alitalia (C-549/07) held that technical problems are normal business for an airline and do not excuse payment. Van der Lans v KLM (C-257/14) went further: even a hidden component failing without warning is not extraordinary, because keeping the fleet working is their job. The narrow exception is a fleet-wide defect the manufacturer has flagged, or sabotage.
They owe nothing for bad weather, air traffic control restrictions or strikes, a security alert, airport closure, political instability, a medical emergency on board, or a bird strike. Even then they owe you care while you wait.
What if the delay passes five hours?
Five hours unlocks a right the shorter thresholds do not carry, and nobody at the gate mentions it. Article 6(1)(iii) hands you Article 8(1)(a): reimbursement for the parts you have not flown, and for the parts you have flown if the trip no longer serves its purpose. You can abandon the journey and get your money back within seven days, though nothing was cancelled. Stuck mid-connection, it covers a flight home too. It is separate from compensation, so a five hour delay the airline caused owes you both.
What do they owe you while you wait?
This applies even when no compensation is due, weather delays included. It is the right most often denied at the airport and the easiest to enforce: buy what you need and claim it back. The clock starts at two hours up to 1,500 km, three between 1,500 and 3,500 km, four for everything else.
Past that they must provide, free, meals appropriate to the wait, two phone calls or messages, and a hotel plus transport overnight. If they do not, buy your own, keep every receipt, and claim it back. The test is reasonableness. A business hotel near the airport is reasonable. A suite and tasting menu is not. Buying your own replacement ticket works the same way on a higher bar, turning on whether they failed to re-route you first.
How do you claim, and who do you complain to?
Claims companies take 25 to 40 percent plus VAT, about €250 of a €600 claim for filling in a form. They earn it only if the airline refuses and you will not go to court yourself.
- Gather the booking reference, boarding passes and the actual gate arrival time, not the scheduled one. Photograph the departure board showing the delay.
- Get the reason in writing. Article 14(2) obliges them to hand anyone delayed two hours or more a written notice of the rules and the enforcement body’s contact details. Most never do, and asking for it by name changes the tone. Flight tracking sites keep historical data if you need to reconstruct the day.
- Claim direct. Cite Regulation (EC) 261/2004, give the flight number, date, distance band and the amount. Name the figure you want rather than asking what they think you are owed.
- If they refuse or ignore you, escalate to the national enforcement body where you departed. Every EU state designates one under Article 16 and complaining is free.
- Small claims court is the last step, cheap in most countries and built for use without a lawyer.
Article 15 matters before you settle: these rights cannot be waived, and if you took a lower sum because nobody told you what you were owed, you can still sue for the difference. A first rejection is not the end of it, because what counts as extraordinary is precisely what the two sides disagree about.
What changed in 2026?
Everything above is the law as it stands. Parliament approved the first serious reform since 2004 on 7 July 2026 by 646 votes to 12, and the Council cleared it on 13 July 2026. The three hour threshold survived years of lobbying to raise it, and the €250, €400 and €600 amounts are unchanged. What changes: a single nine month deadline to file, with 30 days for the airline to pay or say in writing why not; one personal item carried free, with fares shown inclusive of carry-on; a free adjacent seat for whoever accompanies a child under 14; and no fee to fix a misspelled name or print a boarding pass after check-in.
None of it applies to a flight disrupted today. The new rules enter into force 12 months and 20 days after publication in the Official Journal, so the current text governs your claim and national time limits still decide how long you have.
The mistakes that lose claims
Accepting a voucher is the expensive one. Article 7(3) lets them pay in travel credit only with your signed agreement, so taking it at the desk can be treated as settling a cash claim.
The others come up almost as often. People use the scheduled arrival time instead of the actual one. They assume a cheap fare means less money, when distance alone sets the figure. They forget that on one booking what counts is when they reached the final destination, so a missed connection still counts. And they give up when the airline says “extraordinary circumstances” without asking what, specifically. Vagueness usually means a technical fault. A downgrade is a different claim, because a lower class pays a percentage of that fare, not a fixed sum.
Frequently asked questions
Does this cover non-EU airlines? Departing an EU airport, yes, on any airline. Arriving into the EU, only if the carrier is EU based. Dubai to Paris on Emirates is not covered. Paris to Dubai is.
Does it still apply to the UK? Yes. The UK kept the rules as UK261 after Brexit, same thresholds, paid in pounds at £220, £350 and £520.
How long do I have to claim? National law where you claim decides it: about one year in Poland, six in the UK, ten in Spain. Once the reform applies it becomes a uniform nine months.
Do I get paid if I missed a connection? If it was one booking and you arrived three or more hours late overall, yes.
Sources: Regulation (EC) No 261/2004, Articles 6 to 9 and 14 to 16, on EUR-Lex; the European Commission’s Interpretative Guidelines on Regulation (EC) 261/2004 of 25 September 2024; Your Europe, air passenger rights; the Commission’s list of national enforcement bodies; the Court of Justice rulings in Sturgeon v Condor (C-402/07), Wallentin-Hermann v Alitalia (C-549/07), van der Lans v KLM (C-257/14) and Germanwings v Henning (C-452/13); the European Parliament’s statement of 7 July 2026 on the reform; the Council’s final adoption of 13 July 2026; and Article 7 of the UK retained regulation for the sterling amounts.
Researched from primary sources and checked September 2026. General information, not legal advice.
Aircraft cabin photograph by Delta News Hub, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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