If you arrived at your final destination three hours or more late, EU261 owes you €250, €400 or €600 and UK261 owes you £220, £350 or £520, in cash rather than vouchers, decided by distance and by arrival delay rather than departure delay, unless the airline proves both an extraordinary circumstance and all reasonable measures. Food and a hotel are owed separately.
The European Parliament adopted the revised regulation on 7 July 2026, by 646 votes to 12. Parliament’s release says the Council was due to confirm it by early August, and we could not read the Council’s own release, so this page does not cite it. Many pages, including Wikipedia at the time of writing, still describe the Council’s June 2025 negotiating position, which was defeated, four and six-hour thresholds and €600 cut to €500. Neither happened. The three-hour threshold and the €250 / €400 / €600 amounts survived intact.
| Flight distance | EU261 | UK261 |
|---|---|---|
| 1,500 km or less | €250 | £220 |
| Over 1,500 km within the EU, and all other flights 1,500–3,500 km | €400 | £350 |
| Over 3,500 km | €600 | £520 |
The sterling amounts are fixed in UK law, not converted, so the two regimes drift apart with the exchange rate. Payment is in cash or bank transfer. A travel voucher is only valid with your signed agreement, under Article 7(3).
Check what your flight is owedOur compensation partner. No win, no fee. We earn a commission if the claim is paid.Tracked on mobile web only, the page works on desktop too.
Article 7(2) allows a 50% reduction where re-routing gets you to your final destination within a stated margin of the original arrival time. In practice this means a long-haul flight arriving three hours and one minute late pays €300, not €600. The regulation words the reduction for re-routing after a cancellation. The Court’s Sturgeon and Nelson judgments treat a delay of three hours or more like a cancellation, and the Commission’s interpretative guidelines in the sources apply the same halving to long delays.
Both regulators print the halved figures themselves, so none of the numbers below are our arithmetic. Your Europe publishes €125, €200 and €300. The CAA publishes £110, £175 and £260. An earlier version of this page said the CAA did not publish them. That was wrong, and it is corrected here.
| Distance | Arrival delay | EU261 | UK261 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 1,500 km | 2 hours or more | €250 | £220 |
| Under 2 hours | €125 | £110 | |
| 1,500–3,500 km | 3 hours or more | €400 | £350 |
| Under 3 hours | €200 | £175 | |
| Over 3,500 km | 4 hours or more | €600 | £520 |
| Under 4 hours | €300 | £260 |
It comes from the Court of Justice, in Sturgeon v Condor (C-402/07) and Böck v Air France, which held that passengers delayed three hours or more may be treated as passengers whose flights were cancelled, and may therefore rely on the right to compensation in Article 7. Knowing this matters when an airline argues the text does not mention delays, it does not, and the Court settled it anyway.
The clock runs on arrival at your final destination. Departure delay is not the measure, which is why a flight that leaves late and makes up the time owes nothing, and a flight that leaves on time and lands three hours late owes the full amount.
| Notice given | Compensation owed? |
|---|---|
| At least 14 days before departure | No |
| 7 to 14 days before | No, if re-routed departing under 2 hours early and arriving under 4 hours late. Otherwise yes. |
| Less than 7 days before | No, if re-routed departing under 1 hour early and arriving under 2 hours late. Otherwise yes. |
Nearly every page on this subject states the 14-day rule in the abstract and stops there. The money changes at that exact boundary, and then changes again depending on the replacement flight. Counting back from the scheduled departure, here are the three days either side of it.
At 13 days you are in the seven to 14 day band, and that band is where Article 7(2) does its work. The halving margin is arrival under two hours late for flights under 1,500 km, under three hours for 1,500 to 3,500 km, and under four hours for anything over 3,500 km. Land inside that margin and the airline pays half, £175 on a medium-haul flight and £260 on a long-haul one. Land outside it and it pays the full £350 or £520.
| The replacement flight | What is owed |
|---|---|
| Departs up to 2 hours early, or any time after the original departure, and lands under 4 hours late | Nothing. The offer sits inside the re-routing margin |
| Departs more than 2 hours early, and lands inside the halving margin for its distance | £110, £175 or £260 |
| Departs more than 2 hours early, and lands outside the halving margin | £220, £350 or £520 |
| Lands more than 4 hours late, whatever time it departed | £220, £350 or £520 |
That last row is the one airlines skip. The CAA states it plainly, that where the replacement arrives more than four hours late the difference between the original and the new departure time is irrelevant and the full amount applies. So a 13-day cancellation rebooked onto a flight leaving at a convenient hour still pays in full if it lands you more than four hours late.
Below seven days the margin tightens rather than disappearing. Nothing is owed only if the replacement departs no more than an hour early and lands under two hours late. The euro equivalents of all of this are in the halved amounts table above.
Find out which band your cancellation falls inThe band depends on the replacement flight, not on the cancellation notice alone.Tracked on mobile web only, the page works on desktop too.
This is where valid claims are most often refused. Article 5(3) excuses the airline only if it proves the disruption was caused by extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken. That is two things to prove, not one. Airlines routinely assert the first and say nothing about the second, and a refusal that does not address reasonable measures is an incomplete refusal.
| Cause | Extraordinary? | Authority |
|---|---|---|
| Technical fault from maintenance | No | Wallentin-Hermann v Alitalia, C-549/07 |
| Hidden manufacturing defect | Can be | Wallentin-Hermann, C-549/07 |
| Airline staff strike over pay | No | Airhelp v SAS, C-28/20 |
| Wildcat sickness action | No | Krüsemann, C-195/17 |
| Crew unavailable, including death of a pilot | No | Joined cases C-156/22 to C-158/22 |
| Bird strike | Yes, with reasonable measures still required | Pešková v Travel Services, C-315/15 |
| Volcanic ash | Yes | McDonagh v Ryanair, C-12/11 |
| Air traffic control decisions, airport strikes, severe weather | Generally yes | Your Europe, European Commission |
Was the refusal extraordinary? Have it checkedAirlines invoke the exemption far more often than the test allows.Tracked on mobile web only, the page works on desktop too.
The right to care under Article 9 is separate from compensation and applies even when the disruption is extraordinary. It covers meals and refreshments proportionate to the wait, hotel accommodation where an overnight stay becomes necessary, transport between the airport and the hotel, and two free communications. In McDonagh v Ryanair the Court held this duty has no monetary or temporal limit. If an airline tells you it owes you nothing because the delay was weather, it is answering a different question.
UK261 covers flights departing a UK airport on any airline, arriving at a UK airport on a UK or EU airline, and arriving at an EU airport on a UK airline. A non-EU, non-UK carrier flying out of the UK is covered by UK261 and not by EU261.
Three inputs decide it and no others. The airport you departed from, the airport you arrived at, and the country the operating carrier is licensed in. Work through them in that order. The departure airport usually settles it on its own, with one exception worth knowing, that on flights between the UK and the EU both regimes can reach the same flight.
Delta from JFK to Paris is the case readers ask about most. It departs outside both regimes and the operating carrier is American, so neither UK261 nor EU261 covers it, and a US passenger has no fixed-sum right to fall back on. The same aircraft flying Paris to JFK is covered by EU261, because the departure airport settles it before the carrier is even considered.
| Distance and arrival delay | EU261, in euro | UK261, in sterling |
|---|---|---|
| 1,500 km or less | €250 | £220 |
| Over 1,500 km within the EU, and all other flights 1,500–3,500 km | €400 | £350 |
| Over 3,500 km, arrival 3 to 4 hours late | €300 | £260 |
| Over 3,500 km, arrival 4 hours or more late | €600 | £520 |
Worth being explicit about one thing, because plenty of pages imply otherwise. £520 and €600 are not the same sum, and neither is a conversion of the other. Each is a fixed figure written into its own regulation, sterling in retained UK law and euro in the EU text. Neither is indexed to the other, so the gap between them moves with the exchange rate. Where only one regime reaches your flight, that regime decides both the amount and the currency. Where both reach it, neither regulator publishes a rule for choosing between them, so we are not publishing one either.
| Change | Detail |
|---|---|
| Claim deadline | Nine months from the flight to submit |
| Airline response | Thirty days to pay or give reasons |
| Proactive notice | Claim instructions sent within four days of the journey |
| Hand baggage | One personal item, such as a small bag or backpack, carried free. The release gives no dimensions or weight for the final text, so none are published here |
| Seating | Children under 14 seated with an accompanying adult free of charge |
| Extraordinary circumstances | A codified non-exhaustive list, a required direct causal link, and a duty to explain the refusal in plain language |
| No-show | Cancelling a return leg because the outbound went unused is prohibited |
Every row above was re-read against Parliament’s release on 10 September 2026. Three things that circulate elsewhere are not in it, cabin-bag dimensions, self-arranged re-routing and its reimbursement cap, and so they are not here.
None of this applies to the United Kingdom. UK261 was not amended, so from around 2027 the two regimes diverge substantially. A UK passenger will not get the nine-month deadline, the thirty-day response duty or the free personal item.
Start a claim under the current rulesThe reform applies later. Today's rules are the ones above.Tracked on mobile web only, the page works on desktop too.
Once you have written to the airline, three separate periods start running, and they are set by three different bodies. They are routinely confused with each other, which is how a valid claim goes quiet. None of them is the limitation period, which is a fourth thing and is in the next section.
| The clock | How long | Who sets it |
|---|---|---|
| Airline must pay or give reasons | 30 days, once the 2026 reform applies | The revised regulation. Not yet in force |
| Wait before you can escalate, UK | 8 weeks from your written complaint | CAA, for airlines in an approved ADR scheme |
| Wait before you can escalate, EU | 2 months with no reply, or a reply you are not satisfied with | European Commission, Your Europe |
| Deadline to file with the ADR scheme | 12 months from the airline’s final response, or from your last letter if none ever came | CAA, for AviationADR and CEDR |
The CAA sets a back stop on top of those. Its own page states you can use ADR for issues that happened within the last six years, or five years if you live in Scotland, that the scheme is free, and that it usually decides within three months. The two approved schemes are AviationADR and CEDR, and which one you get depends on your airline rather than on you. Neither will look at a complaint you have not put to the airline in writing first.
One thing to be clear about, because it is the part that reads better than it is. The reform creates a duty on the airline to answer within 30 days. Parliament’s release names no penalty a passenger can collect for missing it, so we are not telling you that silence past day 30 becomes an extra payment. What the duty does is start a clock you can act on, and the remedy stays exactly what it is today, the national enforcement body, the ADR scheme, or the court.
The regulation itself sets no deadline. In Cuadrench Moré v KLM (C-139/11) the Court held that the limitation period is a matter for national law, so it depends on where you bring the claim, and you can often choose the airline’s home country. Your Europe says the same in its own words, that the time limits for bringing an action against an airline in a national court are defined in accordance with national rules on the limitation of actions in each EU country.
| Where you bring it | Years | What the source says |
|---|---|---|
| England and Wales | 6 | CAA, the legal limit to issue claims at court is six years from the date of the incident. Limitation Act 1980 section 5, six years on a simple contract |
| Northern Ireland | 6 | Limitation (Northern Ireland) Order 1989 article 4, six years on a simple contract. The Limitation Act 1980 does not reach Northern Ireland, so the figure comes from the Order instead |
| Scotland | 5 | CAA, five years. Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973 section 6, the short negative prescription of five years |
| Ireland | 6 | Statute of Limitations 1957 section 11(1), six years on a simple contract and on a sum recoverable by virtue of an enactment |
| France | 5 | Code civil article 2224, five years from the day you knew or should have known the facts allowing you to act |
| Germany | 3 | BGB section 195, a standard period of three years, and section 199, which starts it at the end of the year in which the claim arose |
Germany is the row most often misread. Three years sounds like the shortest on the table and in practice it is not far off four, because section 199 starts the clock at the end of the calendar year rather than on the day of the flight. A flight in March 2026 runs to the end of 2029.
Spain and the Netherlands are absent on purpose. The figures that circulate for them, five years and two years, come from claim companies rather than from the codes, and on 15 September 2026 we could not read the Spanish Código Civil article or the Dutch Burgerlijk Wetboek article those figures rest on. The Dutch one is contested in the Dutch courts as well, with judgments going both ways and nothing from the Hoge Raad. Both rows go in when we have read the statute, and not before.
The 2026 reform adds the first deadline the regulation has ever set for itself, nine months from the flight to submit the request to the airline. It binds only once the amending regulation applies. It does not shorten any of the national periods above, and it does nothing at all to a flight that has already happened.
Our compensation partner checks a flight against the rules above and takes the claim on a no-win, no-fee basis. We earn a commission if a claim it starts is paid. Nothing above this line changes either way. If the airline paid nothing and the hospital bill was the real cost, that is the insurance guide, not this one.
Check your flight with CompensairDelayed three hours or more, cancelled, or denied boarding in the last few years.Tracked on mobile web only, the page works on desktop too.
Fee figures read on 15 September 2026 from Compensair’s published payment policy at www.compensair.com/documents/Compensair/en/PaymentPolicy_Compensair_en.pdf, a document dated 23 June 2023. A service fee of 30 percent, plus a legal fee of 10 percent where it incurs court or external lawyer costs. We print the address rather than link it, because an outbound link to a partner belongs in a tracked link and not in a citation. What the fee costs you, and whether the money is taxable, each get their own piece in the journal.
Compensation is the money you are owed after the trip went wrong. Insurance is the money that covers the part EU261 does not, the hospital.
If you arrived three hours or more late, compensation is a legal entitlement, not a goodwill gesture. Airlines refuse a meaningful share of valid claims.
Check your flightMost claims are refused for a reason the policy stated plainly. Check the medical limit, the excess and the activity exclusions before you buy, not after.
Compare coverArrival. The clock is the delay at your final destination, not at the gate you left from. A flight that pushes back four hours late but makes up time and lands two hours fifty late owes you nothing, and a flight that leaves on time and lands three hours late does.
No, and this is where most valid claims are wrongly refused. The airline has to prove two things, not one, that an extraordinary circumstance existed, and that it took all reasonable measures anyway. Airlines routinely assert the first and stay silent on the second.
Usually not. In Wallentin-Hermann v Alitalia the Court held that technical problems arising in or from maintenance are inherent in the normal exercise of an airline’s activity. A hidden manufacturing defect can qualify; a component that failed in service generally does not.
It depends whose. A strike by air traffic control, the airport operator or ground handling is a third-party event and generally extraordinary. A strike by the airline’s own staff in a pay dispute is not, per Airhelp v SAS, because collective bargaining is part of running an airline.
Yes. The right to care under Article 9 is separate from compensation and applies even in extraordinary circumstances. In McDonagh v Ryanair the Court held that this duty has no monetary or temporal limit, which is one of the least-explained rights in the regulation.
If the whole journey was on one booking, the delay is measured at your final destination, so a short first-leg delay that costs you a connection and lands you hours late can be a full claim. On separate bookings the airline generally owes you nothing.
The regulation sets no deadline of its own. The Court held in Cuadrench Moré v KLM that the limitation period is a matter for national law, so it runs from six years in England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland, through five in Scotland and France, down to three in Germany counted from the end of the year. The table on this page names the source we read for each on 15 September 2026.
Only if you agree in writing. Article 7(3) allows payment in travel vouchers exclusively with the signed agreement of the passenger. An offer of a voucher is an offer, not a settlement, and accepting one usually ends the claim.
No tax authority publishes guidance naming EU261. The closest official statement we could read on 15 September 2026 is HMRC’s own manual, which says sums received as compensation or damages for a wrong or injury suffered by an individual are not chargeable to capital gains tax under section 51(2) TCGA 1992. It does not mention flights or air passenger compensation anywhere, so treat it as the nearest thing on the record rather than as a ruling on your claim.
Compensair, which is our compensation partner and pays us a commission, publishes a service fee of 30 percent of the compensation recovered, and reserves a further legal fee of 10 percent where it incurs court or external lawyer costs. Read from its own payment policy on 15 September 2026. On a €600 claim that is €180 kept, or €240 if the legal fee applies. Taking the claim to the ADR scheme yourself costs nothing.