What are my rights if my flight is cancelled?

Two separate entitlements sit behind a cancellation, and it pays to keep them apart. The duty of care — food, communication and accommodation — is owed regardless of why the flight was cancelled, including in weather and air traffic control disruption. Fixed cash compensation is a different thing, owed only where the airline cannot show extraordinary circumstances. Taking a re-route does not extinguish a compensation claim, and taking compensation does not extinguish the refund. Our reading is that any voucher or goodwill gesture should be checked against all three rights before you accept it; neither the CAA nor the Regulation frames it that way.

On the refund-or-re-route choice, the decision is yours. Article 8 of the retained Regulation 261/2004 gives you reimbursement within seven days of the full cost of the unused parts of the ticket, plus a flight back to your first point of departure where a connection has left you stranded partway — or re-routing to your final destination at the earliest opportunity, or at a later date that suits you, subject to seats. Article 8(3) makes the airline bear the cost of transferring you if it flies you into a different airport in the same city or region.

The duty of care under Article 9 is meals and refreshments in reasonable relation to the waiting time, two free telephone calls, telex or fax messages or emails, hotel accommodation where an overnight stay becomes necessary, and transport between the airport and the hotel. The Regulation sets no monetary cap. The Civil Aviation Authority says that where the airline does not organise care, you may make your own arrangements and claim the cost back, and to keep an itemised receipt — but it warns that airlines are unlikely to treat alcoholic drinks, luxury hotels or luxury meals as reasonable.

Compensation turns on notice. Under Article 5 nothing is payable if you were told at least two weeks ahead. Between two weeks and seven days it is payable unless the re-route departs no more than two hours early and lands under four hours late; inside seven days, unless the re-route departs within an hour and lands within two hours of the original. Article 7 sets the sums at £220 for flights of 1,500km or less, £350 for 1,500–3,500km and £520 beyond, and allows the airline to halve each figure where a re-route holds your arrival delay inside two, three or four hours by distance.

Coverage is geographic, not national. Article 3 applies the rules to any passenger departing from a UK airport on any airline, and to passengers flying into the UK from elsewhere where the operating carrier is a UK or Community air carrier. You need a confirmed reservation and, except where the flight is cancelled, to have presented for check-in on time or at least 45 minutes before departure. Fares not available directly or indirectly to the public are excluded, so staff and prize tickets sit outside the scheme, though frequent flyer redemptions are inside it.

Claim direct first, in writing, and pay nothing for it — the CAA requires you to give the airline a chance to resolve the complaint before anyone else will look at it. Where the airline belongs to an approved alternative dispute resolution body — AviationADR or CEDR — use that scheme; the CAA says an airline is required to follow an adjudicator's decision you accept, while you stay free to reject it and sue. Where it belongs to neither, the CAA's Passenger Advice and Complaints Team looks at the complaint after eight weeks, but says plainly it has no power to impose a solution. The CAA puts the court limit at six years in England and Wales and five in Scotland.