What to do if your flight is cancelled or delayed

Start by writing down three separate headings, because that is how the Regulation is built and it is not how an airline's claim form is built. The first is the right to care under Article 9. The second is the right to reimbursement or re-routing under Article 8. The third is the right to compensation under Article 7. They are triggered by different events, they are measured in different ways, and only the third one can be defeated by the airline proving it was not at fault.

The duty of care is the one people leave on the table. Article 9 requires the operating air carrier to provide, free of charge, meals and refreshments in a reasonable relation to the waiting time, hotel accommodation where a stay of one or more nights becomes necessary, and transport between the airport and that accommodation. Article 9(2) adds two telephone calls, telex or fax messages, or emails. There is no monetary cap anywhere in the article, and neither Article 5(3) nor Article 6(4) — the two provisions that create the extraordinary circumstances defence — touches it.

That matters because it inverts the usual assumption. Bad weather, an air traffic control failure, a runway closure, a security alert: all of these are exactly the events an airline will cite to refuse compensation, and none of them relieves it of a single meal voucher or hotel night. That is why a refusal letter is worth reading twice. A line declining compensation on extraordinary circumstances grounds has said nothing at all about the care bill, and the care bill in a multi-day event is the part with no ceiling on it.

The refund-or-rerouting right sits between the two and is the one that gets you home. Article 8 gives you a choice, and the choice is yours rather than the airline's: reimbursement within seven days of the full cost of the ticket for the parts of the journey not made, together with a return flight to your first point of departure where relevant; or re-routing under comparable transport conditions to your final destination at the earliest opportunity; or re-routing at a later date at your convenience, subject to seats being available.

Compensation is the narrowest of the three and the one everyone searches for. Article 7 fixes it at £220, £350 or £520 depending on the great circle distance to the final destination, and it is payable regardless of what your ticket cost — a £39 fare and a £390 fare on the same aircraft attract the same sum. It is also the only head that the airline can decline outright by proving extraordinary circumstances that could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken.

Practically, this means your claim letter should contain three numbered asks, not one. Ask for the fixed compensation under Article 7 with the arithmetic shown. Ask separately for reimbursement of the expenses the airline should have covered under Article 9, with receipts attached. And state which Article 8 option you took, and whether the airline actually delivered it. Bundling them invites a single-line rejection that answers the compensation question and buries the other two.

Article 3(1)(a) is the easy half: the Regulation applies to passengers departing from an airport located in the United Kingdom, on any airline in the world. A Qatar Airways departure from Manchester and a United Airlines departure from Heathrow are both inside UK261, regardless of where the carrier is licensed or where you bought the ticket.

Article 3(1)(b), as substituted for the UK at the end of the implementation period, covers the inbound half and is narrower. It applies to passengers departing from an airport outside the UK to an airport in the United Kingdom, but only if the operating carrier is a Community carrier or a UK air carrier; and to passengers flying to an EU Member State, but only if the operating carrier is a UK air carrier. It does not apply where the passengers already received benefits or compensation and were given assistance in that other country. The CAA states the same test in plainer words on its denied boarding guidance.

That leaves the flights people most often get wrong: a long-haul return leg into the UK on a non-UK, non-EU airline. Delhi to Heathrow on a UK or EU carrier is covered; the same route on a carrier licensed elsewhere is not, and the remedy then lies in the airline's own conditions of carriage, the Montreal Convention or your travel insurance rather than in UK261. Citizens Advice adds the mirror-image point that departures from the EU, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland remain covered on any airline — but by the EU regulation, enforced by that country's national body, not by the CAA.

Multi-leg journeys were clarified on 14 December 2023. Article 3(1A), inserted by the Aviation (Consumers) (Amendment) Regulations 2023, provides that a flight comprised of more than one leg is treated as a whole if it was booked as a single unit, and as departing from the point of departure of the first leg. One booking reference covering Edinburgh to Amsterdam to Nairobi is therefore a single UK-departing flight for these purposes; two separately purchased tickets are two separate flights, and a missed connection between them is your problem, not the airline's.

Two conditions in Article 3(2) are easy to fail. You must have a confirmed reservation on the flight concerned, and — except where the flight was cancelled under Article 5 — you must present yourself for check-in as stipulated by the carrier, tour operator or authorised travel agent, or if no time was indicated, not later than 45 minutes before the published departure time. Turning up late and finding the flight was also delayed does not restore the right; the cancellation carve-out exists precisely because a cancelled flight has no check-in desk to attend.

Article 3(3) excludes passengers travelling free of charge or at a reduced fare not available directly or indirectly to the public — staff travel and industry-discount tickets, in practice. It expressly preserves the rights of passengers holding tickets issued under a frequent flyer or other commercial programme, so an Avios redemption is fully covered. Article 3(4) limits the whole instrument to motorised fixed-wing aircraft, which puts helicopter transfers outside it.

Finally, Article 3(6) keeps the Regulation and package travel law running side by side: UK261 does not affect passengers' rights under the Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements Regulations 2018, and it does not apply where a package tour is cancelled for reasons other than cancellation of the flight. If you bought a package, you have two contracts to work — the airline's obligations under UK261 and the organiser's obligations under the 2018 Regulations — and you should pursue both rather than choosing one.

The care clock starts before the compensation clock, and it starts on the scheduled departure time rather than on arrival. Article 6(1) requires the operating carrier to offer assistance when it reasonably expects a delay beyond the scheduled departure of two hours or more for flights of 1,500 kilometres or less, three hours or more for flights between 1,500 and 3,500 kilometres, and four hours or more for everything longer. The CAA sets out the same three thresholds on its delays page.

What is owed at that point is Article 9(1)(a) and 9(2): meals and refreshments in a reasonable relation to the waiting time, and two telephone calls, telex or fax messages, or emails, free of charge. In practice this arrives as a voucher of a fixed value handed out at the gate. The voucher is the airline's method of discharging the duty, not the measure of it — if it does not stretch to a reasonable meal at airport prices, buy the meal and keep the receipt.

When the delay pushes into the next day, Article 6(1)(ii) escalates the duty to Article 9(1)(b) and 9(1)(c): hotel accommodation where a stay of one or more nights becomes necessary, and transport between the airport and that accommodation. This is the expensive limb, and the one hardest to deliver in a mass disruption when the hotels near the airport have already filled. Article 9(3) requires particular attention to persons with reduced mobility and any persons accompanying them, and to unaccompanied children.

If the airline does not provide any of it, the remedy is self-help and receipts. The CAA's guidance is explicit: where the airline does not give you the care it should, you can arrange it yourself and claim the costs back, keeping receipts. Citizens Advice adds the qualification that matters — airlines only pay for reasonable expenses, so a four-star suite and a bottle of wine will be argued over, while a modest airport hotel, a taxi to it and ordinary meals will not. Photograph the departure board, note the times, and pay by card so the transaction is dated.

At five hours the character of the delay changes. Article 6(1)(iii) triggers the assistance in Article 8(1)(a) — reimbursement within seven days of the full cost of the ticket for the parts of the journey not made, together with a return flight to your first point of departure at the earliest opportunity where the flight no longer serves any purpose. In plain terms, once you are five hours late you may abandon the journey and demand your money back, even though the flight is still, technically, going to operate.

None of this depends on fault. There is no extraordinary circumstances defence to Article 9, which is why the standard rejection wording — that compensation is not payable because of weather or an air traffic control restriction — does not answer a care claim at all. Send the expense claim separately, cite Article 9, and if the reply again refers only to compensation, say so and ask for a response to the care claim specifically.

When a flight is cancelled, Article 5(1)(a) requires the carrier to offer you the assistance in Article 8 — and Article 8 is framed as a choice offered to the passenger, not an option selected by the airline. The three routes are reimbursement, re-routing at the earliest opportunity under comparable transport conditions, or re-routing at a later date at your convenience subject to seat availability. An airline that emails to say it has automatically refunded you has taken the decision that was yours to make, and it has done so in the option that costs it least.

Reimbursement under Article 8(1)(a) must be paid within seven days by the means set out in Article 7(3), covers the full cost of the ticket for the part or parts of the journey not made, and — where you are part-way through a journey and continuing no longer makes sense — includes a return flight to your first point of departure at the earliest opportunity. The Department for Transport's passenger rights summary states the seven-day rule in the same terms. Note what reimbursement does not do: it ends the airline's involvement, and anything you then pay to get where you were going is yours.

Re-routing is the option that keeps the airline on the hook, and it is not limited to seats the airline happens to have empty on its own network. The obligation is to carry you to your final destination under comparable transport conditions at the earliest opportunity, and the CAA describes the duty as arranging an alternative flight either as soon as possible or at a later date of your choosing. Ask in writing for the earliest available seat on any carrier and keep the refusal if you get one.

There is a trap in the alternative airport rule that is worth knowing before you agree to anything. Article 8(3) allows the carrier to fly you to a different airport serving the same town, city or region — but where it does, it bears the cost of transferring you from that airport either to the one you booked or to another agreed nearby destination. A coach from Stansted to Gatwick at your own expense is not a lawful discharge of the duty.

Vouchers are the other trap. Article 7(3) provides that compensation is paid in cash, by electronic bank transfer, bank orders or bank cheques, or — only with the signed agreement of the passenger — in travel vouchers or other services. A voucher pressed on you at a desk, or applied to your account by default, is not a valid discharge unless you agreed to it in signed terms, and a voucher is worth less than cash because it is redeemable only with the airline that let you down.

If the flight was part of a package, work both contracts. Article 3(6) preserves your rights under the Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements Regulations 2018, and Article 8(2) makes the reimbursement right subject to those Regulations where they apply. Under regulation 13 of the 2018 Regulations an organiser may terminate the contract and refund you in full — without further compensation — if it is prevented from performing by unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances and tells you before the package starts, or if minimum numbers are not met and it gives the prescribed notice of 20 days, 7 days or 48 hours depending on trip length.

One thing the Regulation does not give you is consequential loss. Article 12 preserves your right to further compensation under other law — a missed hotel night, a non-refundable excursion, a day of unpaid leave — while providing that anything paid under UK261 may be deducted from it. That claim is a contract or Montreal Convention claim, not a UK261 claim, and it usually belongs with your travel insurer first.

For delays, the test is arrival, not departure. Article 6(3), inserted on 14 December 2023 by the Aviation (Consumers) (Amendment) Regulations 2023, provides that in the case of a delay of three hours or more in reaching the final destination, the passengers concerned have the right to the compensation laid down in Article 7. That put a rule previously derived from case law onto the face of the retained instrument, which matters for anyone arguing with an airline that would rather talk about when the aircraft pushed back.

The same 2023 instrument defined what arrival means. Article 2(n) now says arrival time is the time passengers are permitted to exit the aircraft upon reaching the final destination — not touchdown, not the moment the seatbelt sign goes off, but the moment the door opens. On a marginal claim sitting either side of three hours, the taxi to stand and the wait for steps or an airbridge can be the difference, so note the time you actually got off and take a timestamped photograph if you can.

The amounts are fixed by Article 7(1) at £220 for flights of 1,500 kilometres or less, £350 for flights between 1,500 and 3,500 kilometres, and £520 for everything else, measured by the great circle route method and calculated to the last destination at which the denial of boarding, delay or cancellation delays your arrival. The pound figures replaced the original euro amounts at the end of the implementation period under the 2019 EU Exit Regulations. For long-haul delays the CAA applies £260 where you arrive between three and four hours late and £520 beyond four hours.

Cancellations run on a notice ladder set by Article 5(1)(c), and the further ahead the airline tells you, the less it owes. Told at least two weeks before scheduled departure, no compensation is due at all. Told between two weeks and seven days before, compensation is avoided only if you are offered re-routing departing no more than two hours before the original time and arriving less than four hours after it. Told less than seven days before, the offered re-routing must depart no more than one hour early and arrive less than two hours late.

The 50% reduction in Article 7(2) is separate and is frequently applied wrongly. It allows the carrier to halve the compensation where you accept re-routing whose arrival time does not exceed the original scheduled arrival by two hours on short-haul, three hours on medium-haul or four hours on long-haul. It bites on the actual arrival time of the replacement flight, so an airline that offers a re-route and then delivers you outside those windows cannot rely on it.

Article 5(4) puts the burden of proving whether and when the passenger was informed of a cancellation on the operating air carrier. That is a genuinely useful provision: if the airline says it emailed you sixteen days out and you have no such email, you do not have to prove a negative — it has to produce the record. Ask for it in writing and note that a spam-folder assertion is not proof of communication.

Everything in this section applies equally to denied boarding. The CAA's guidance sets out that where a flight is overbooked the airline must first call for volunteers, whose compensation is a matter of negotiation and can be cash or vouchers by agreement, and that a passenger denied boarding involuntarily receives the statutory sums — with the reduced figures of £110, £175 and £260 where the replacement gets them in less than two, three or four hours late respectively. The Consumer Council for Northern Ireland notes that compensation and assistance are not provided where the airline considered the passenger unfit to travel.

The defence lives in two mirror provisions. Article 5(3) relieves the carrier of the obligation to pay compensation for a cancellation if it can prove that the cancellation was caused by extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken; Article 6(4), inserted in December 2023, does the same for delay. Note the direction of travel: the words in both provisions are 'if it can prove', so the obligation to make out the defence sits with the carrier, not with you. The CAA's guidance follows the same line — where an airline considers the disruption was caused by extraordinary circumstances, it says, the airline will need to clearly set out why.

Since 14 December 2023 the phrase has a statutory definition, which it did not have before. Article 2(o) defines extraordinary circumstances as circumstances which cause the delay or cancellation and which, by their nature or origin, are not inherent in the normal exercise of the activity of the air carrier, are beyond its actual control, and which the carrier took all reasonable measures in relation to but was unable to avoid — or, alternatively, which arose from the impact of an air traffic management decision and could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken.

The CAA's own list of what will normally qualify is short and concrete: weather conditions incompatible with the safe operation of the flight, strikes that are not connected with the airline itself such as those by airport staff, ground handlers, air traffic control or border force, acts of terrorism or sabotage, security risks, political or civil unrest, and hidden manufacturing defects such as a manufacturer recall that grounds a fleet.

What does not qualify is the more useful half. The CAA states that the courts have held technical problems are not an extraordinary circumstance, with two exceptions — a hidden manufacturing defect, and damage caused by an act of sabotage or terrorism. An aircraft that goes technical on stand, a crew that runs out of hours, a late inbound aircraft on the airline's own rotation, an IT failure and a strike by the airline's own staff are all, on that guidance, the airline's problem rather than an act of God.

Read the causation words carefully, because they are where a thin refusal falls apart. The definition requires the circumstance to be one which caused your delay or cancellation, and the defence requires the carrier to show it could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken. A one-line letter citing weather at a different airport eight hours earlier, with no explanation of how that grounded your aircraft or what the airline did to reschedule around it, has not discharged either limb. Ask specifically what the circumstance was, when it occurred, how it affected your flight, and what measures were taken.

The air traffic management limb deserves separate attention, because it is broader than it looks. Air traffic flow restrictions, slot regulation and airspace closures are routine in European summer operations, and an airline that can point to an ATC decision has a statutory route to the defence that does not require it to argue about the normal exercise of its activity at all. That does not make the assertion self-proving — you are still entitled to ask which restriction, issued when, and by which unit.

Compensation is not paid automatically. The CAA says so directly: you have to contact the airline to make a claim, and many carriers publish a standard form for it. Claim against the operating air carrier — the airline whose aircraft and crew actually flew, or should have flown, the sector — because Article 3(5) places the obligations on the operating carrier even where it has no contract with you, and Citizens Advice makes the same point for anyone who booked through a different airline or an agent.

Before you leave the airport, use Article 14. It requires the carrier to display a notice at check-in telling passengers to ask for the text of their rights, and to give every passenger denied boarding, cancelled or delayed by at least two hours a written notice setting out the rules for compensation and assistance, including the contact details of the designated national complaints body. Asking for that document at the desk does two things: it gets you the airline's own statement of your rights, and it timestamps the fact that you raised the issue on the day.

Write rather than phone. Where an airline has no formal claim procedure, the CAA's guidance is to make contact by email so that you have a record of your communication, and to keep copies if you write by post. A call to a contact centre produces no evidence, and every subsequent step in this page — ADR, the CAA's own complaints team, a court claim — depends on being able to show what you asked for and when.

Give the airline everything it needs in one go: the booking reference, the flight number and date, the scheduled and actual departure and arrival times, the names of every passenger on the booking, the distance band you say applies, and the sum you are claiming under each of Articles 7, 8 and 9. Send copies of tickets and receipts rather than originals — Citizens Advice is explicit about that — and, for the care costs, itemise them so a claims handler can approve them line by line without asking you a question.

You do not need a claims management firm, and using one can be actively unhelpful. The CAA notes that some airlines' terms and conditions require passengers to submit claims directly to the airline in the first instance, before involving a third-party representative — so a claim lodged through an agent can be bounced on that ground alone. Every escalation route described in the next section is free to the passenger, and a firm that takes a percentage of a fixed £220 award is taking it out of your money.

Then watch the clock. The CAA's complaints guidance is that if you have not heard back within eight weeks, or you are not happy with the response, you have options — which is the point at which this page stops being about the airline and starts being about the bodies that can lean on it. Do not let a rejection letter sit: the escalation routes have their own entry conditions, and one of them will not accept a case at all if the underlying legal deadline is close.

The first escalation is alternative dispute resolution, and which body you use is decided by the airline's membership rather than by you. The CAA has approved two providers: AviationADR, administered by Consumer Dispute Resolution Limited, and the Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution. AviationADR's members include easyJet, Ryanair, Wizz Air, Virgin Atlantic, TUI, Air France, KLM and Turkish Airlines among others; CEDR handles British Airways, BA CityFlyer, Cathay Pacific, Norse Atlantic and Scandinavian Airlines. Some European carriers, including Lufthansa, Swiss, Austrian and Brussels Airlines, use a German-based scheme instead.

ADR is free to the passenger and it produces a decision that binds the airline. The CAA describes it as simple, free and faster than court, with a decision in most cases within three months. AviationADR states that its service is completely free for passengers and that the participating airline or airport is bound by the final decision once you accept it, with 14 days to accept or reject. CEDR requires a final response letter from the airline before it will take the case, aims to adjudicate within 90 days of a complete file, and requires the airline to comply within 20 working days of a decision in your favour.

If the airline is not an ADR member, the route is the CAA's Passenger Advice and Complaints Team. PACT will consider complaints under UK261, under the assistance rules for disabled and reduced-mobility passengers, and under the Montreal Convention for baggage — but only where the business is not an approved ADR member. It will tell you whether it thinks you have a valid complaint and take it up with the airline. What it cannot do is impose an outcome: the CAA states that it has no legal power to impose a solution, and there is no appeal against its opinion. It also will not handle a complaint where there is less than a year left to take legal action. Cases are logged through the CAA's online complaint form rather than by telephone; the advice and complaints team line, which the CAA publishes on its page about taking an airline to court, is 0330 022 1916.

For flights to and from Northern Ireland the body is different. The Consumer Council for Northern Ireland handles airline and airport complaints for Northern Ireland flights and has the legal power to investigate on your behalf, under an arrangement with the CAA; the Department for Transport's own summary of passenger rights points Northern Ireland passengers to it. Its published three-step approach is to raise it at the airport, then put the complaint in writing with the date, route and flight number and copies of tickets and receipts, then use its online complaints form. It publishes free template letters and can be reached on 0800 121 6022.

Court is the backstop, and the CAA's guidance is that the small claims route is usually the most appropriate place for an airline dispute — after you have written to the airline and escalated to the highest level, logged the claim with PACT and taken its advice on 0330 022 1916. In England and Wales you make a money claim to the county court, online or by post, with mediation available as a cheaper alternative. Scotland uses simple procedure for claims of £5,000 or less, submitted through the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service civil online portal, with no solicitor required. Northern Ireland has its own small claims process for claims up to £5,000, processed through the Civil Processing Centre at Laganside Courts.

The deadline is the part almost nobody checks. Article 3(9), inserted in December 2023, provides that for limitation purposes a claim under the Regulation will be determined in accordance with section 9 of the Limitation Act 1980 — which gives six years from the date the cause of action accrued for an action to recover a sum recoverable by virtue of an enactment. The same 2023 amendment confirms at Article 3(7) and 3(8) that a UK261 obligation is not a Montreal Convention delay liability and that enforcing it is not a Montreal action for damages, which closes off the argument that the Convention's much shorter two-year limit applies.

Two changes are coming and neither is law yet. In its response to the aviation consumer policy consultation the government committed to legislate, when parliamentary time allows, for mandatory ADR membership for all airlines operating to, from and within the UK, and to give the CAA additional administrative powers including the ability to issue financial penalties — while declining, for now, to change the domestic-flight compensation framework. On 2 June 2026 the Department for Transport announced a Civil Aviation Bill that would give the CAA power to fine airlines and airports that fail to meet their obligations to passengers. Until it passes, PACT's opinion remains non-binding.