Your Flight Was Delayed. 

Here's What the Airline Actually Owes You

The short version

• Three hours late on arrival, and you are owed money — €250, €400 or €600 depending on distance. Not a voucher. Cash.
• It is measured on arrival, not departure. A flight that pushes back two hours late and makes up the time on the way owes you nothing.
• Compensation is separate from a refund, and separate from the food and hotel you should have been given while waiting.
• "Technical problem" is almost never a valid excuse. Courts have held repeatedly that routine mechanical faults are part of running an airline.
• Every passenger gets the full amount, including children on their own ticket. A family of four on a delayed long-haul flight is owed €2,400.
• You do not need a claim firm. They take 25–35%. Writing to the airline yourself is free and often works.

There is a calculator at the end that works out your specific case.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Most people on a badly delayed flight do one of two things. They accept the €10 voucher and go home, or they hand the whole thing to a claim company that keeps a third of the money.

The third option — writing a short email yourself — is free, takes about fifteen minutes, and works more often than people expect. Here is what you are actually entitled to.

What the law covers

Regulation EC 261/2004 applies to:

• Any flight leaving an airport in the EU, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland or the UK — on any airline in the world.
• Flights arriving into that area from outside it — but only when a European airline operates them.

That second condition catches people out. Fly Luxembourg to New York on United and you are covered on the way out, because you departed the EU. Fly New York to Luxembourg on United and you are not, because you arrived on a non-European carrier. The same return trip on Lufthansa is covered in both directions.

What you get

Distance is measured great circle — the direct line between airports, not the route the aircraft flew.

Some real examples from Findel:

• Luxembourg to Munich, 431 km — €250
• Luxembourg to Madrid, 1,272 km — €250
• Luxembourg to Lisbon, 1,711 km — €400
• Luxembourg to Tenerife, 3,081 km — €400 (intra-European, so €400 not €600)
• Frankfurt to New York, 6,189 km — €600

Note the Lisbon and Madrid pair. Both feel like similar trips; one is worth €150 more than the other, because Lisbon crosses the 1,500 km line.

The three-hour rule, and where people go wrong

You qualify when you reach your final destination three or more hours late.

Three things follow that people routinely get wrong:

It is arrival, not departure. Sitting on the tarmac for two and a half hours is miserable and worth nothing if the pilot makes up the time. Conversely a modest departure delay that cascades into a missed connection can easily put you over three hours on arrival.

It is the final destination, not the leg. If you booked Luxembourg–Frankfurt–Bangkok on one ticket and the first leg made you miss the connection, what matters is when you reached Bangkok. And the distance band is measured to Bangkok too — so a short delay on a short hop can be worth €600.

Separate tickets break this. If you booked the two legs independently, they are two contracts and the protection does not carry across. This is the single most expensive booking mistake in European air travel.

"Extraordinary circumstances" — the phrase to be sceptical about

Airlines do not have to pay when the cause was genuinely outside their control. That is fair enough, and it covers:

• Severe weather
• Air traffic control restrictions
• Security incidents
• Strikes by people who do not work for the airline
• Political instability

What it does not cover, according to consistent case law:

• Routine technical faults. The European Court has held that mechanical problems arising in the normal course of operating aircraft are inherent to the business, not extraordinary. Airlines still cite them constantly.
• The airline's own staff striking. Pilot and cabin crew strikes are generally treated as within the airline's control.
• Knock-on delays from earlier in the day, where the airline's scheduling left no slack.

What to do about it: ask the airline to state the cause in writing. Verbal explanations at the gate are vague by design. A written answer is much harder to walk back later, and if they refuse to give one, that itself is worth mentioning when you escalate.

What you are owed even when no compensation is due

This is the part almost nobody claims, and it applies regardless of cause — storms included.

Once a delay passes roughly two hours, the airline owes you:

• Food and drink appropriate to the length of the wait
• Two phone calls or emails
• A hotel and transfers if you are kept overnight

If the airline provides nothing — which happens constantly during large-scale disruption — buy what is reasonable yourself and keep the receipts. You can claim it back. Reasonable means a meal and a normal hotel, not a tasting menu and a suite.

For cancellations you also get a straight choice between a full refund and rerouting to your destination. That choice is yours, not the airline's, and being handed a voucher is not the same as being refunded.

How to claim without giving away a third of it

1. Email the airline directly. Quote Regulation EC 261/2004, your booking reference, flight number and date. State the delay on arrival and the amount you are claiming. Keep it short and unemotional.
2. Ask them to confirm the cause in writing.
3. Keep everything — boarding passes, booking confirmation, receipts.
4. If they refuse or go silent, escalate to the national enforcement body of the country you departed from. This is free and airlines take it seriously.
5. Only then consider a claim firm. They typically take 25–35%, and they are genuinely useful if you would otherwise drop it, or if the case is heading to court. But on a straightforward three-hour delay, you are handing over €150 of a €600 claim for an email you could have sent.

On deadlines: time limits currently vary by country, and some are surprisingly long. That is changing — the reformed regulation introduces a single nine-month deadline across the EU. It is not in force yet, but the direction is clear: claim promptly.

What is changing in 2027

EU261 was reformed in 2026 after more than a decade of deadlock. Airlines lobbied hard to raise the three-hour threshold to four, five, even nine hours, which by some analyses would have removed compensation rights from 60–70% of passengers who currently qualify.

They lost. The provisional deal was agreed in June 2026 and approved by Parliament in July. The three-hour threshold survived, and so did the €250–€600 amounts.

What does change, from an expected start in 2027: a guaranteed free personal item and small cabin bag in the base fare, an end to family-seating fees and name-correction charges, stronger protection for passengers with reduced mobility, and that single nine-month claim deadline.

For any flight disrupted today, nothing has changed. The rules in this article are the ones that apply.

Check your own flight

The calculator below takes your two airports, works out the great-circle distance, applies the right band, and checks whether your situation qualifies — including the scope rule about which airline was operating. It also tells you what you are owed regardless of compensation, and how to claim it.

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