Flying to Europe? Delays Can Owe You Hundreds in Fixed Compensation

There's a quirk in the travel world: a flight delay can be worth a refund one direction and a cash payment the other. Flights departing the EU or UK — or operated by EU/UK airlines arriving there — fall under passenger-rights rules that mandate fixed compensation, not just refunds.

For long delays and short-notice cancellations, that's commonly a few hundred euros per passenger, per trip. Most travelers never claim it.

The rough structure

• Delay of 3+ hours at the final destination, and it's the airline's fault (not extraordinary circumstances like a strike or volcano)? Compensation is owed.
• Short flights: around a couple hundred euros. Medium and long-haul: progressively more, up to several hundred euros per passenger.
• Cancellation with less than two weeks' notice? Usually same story — compensation on top of the refund, unless the airline reroutes you acceptably.
• Denied boarding (overbooking)? Compensation applies, and you also choose between refund and rebooking.

What doesn't qualify

Extraordinary circumstances — severe weather, air-traffic control strikes, security issues — generally exempt the airline. And compensation is for delay-caused inconvenience, not for expenses: meals and hotels are a separate duty (keep receipts).

Claim it yourself, free

One caveat: it's best to claim within a year or two, and rules keep evolving post-Brexit and post-2020. Check the current enforcement-body pages before filing an old case.

• File the claim directly with the airline's customer-relations form — airlines pay up when claims are correctly cited.
• Reference the regulation by name and state your flight number, date, delay length, and arrival time from an official source.
• If refused, escalate to the national enforcement body of the departure country (or the UK CAA). Free, and it moves airlines.
• Ignore services that take a commission — the claim costs nothing to file.