Flight Compensation Claim Guides

You may be able to claim a full refund for your airline ticket and compensation if your flight was cancelled less than 14 days before the departure date and the airline could not provide you with an alternative flight that arrived within 2 hours of the originally scheduled arrival time.

Under EU Regulation 261, airlines are legally obliged to compensate passengers who are bumped from a flight due to overbooking. If you were not allowed to board your flight because of overbooking, you can claim compensation up to £520 or get a full refund.

EU Regulation 261 and your rights to claim compensation applies to all types of flight delays, including if your flight was diverted to another airport and you arrived at your original destination more than three hours later than originally scheduled.

If you have been denied boarding your flight through no fault of your own, you may be entitled to flight compensation of up to £520. To claim compensation, you must show that you were a responsible passenger and have not given the airline any reason not to allow you to board the plane.

Under EU Regulation 261, airline passengers have the right to claim compensation only if the airline’s employees are on strike and the strike has caused a delay of at least 3 hours or a flight cancellation.

EU Regulation 261 provides airline passengers the right to claim compensation for flight delays and cancellations caused by bad weather if the weather is not considered “freak” or “wholly exceptional” or if the weather conditions have not forced air traffic control to limit the number of flights.

Extraordinary circumstances are defined in EU Regulation 261/2004 – the law surrounding delayed flights, denied boarding, downgrading and flight cancellations.

As recently as July 2024, the Supreme Court ruled in favour of passengers, determining that crew sickness is not an extraordinary circumstance and that delays and cancellations caused by it are claimable.

If your flight has been cancelled or delayed because of a technical issue on the plane, you are able to claim compensation under EU Regulation 261. EU Reg 261 classifies technical issues or technical faults on an aircraft as the airline’s responsibility, and managing such issues is inherent in the running of an airline.

When calculating the length of a flight delay under EU regulation 261, the arrival time is when at least one of the plane doors is opened. Arrival time is not when the aircraft lands on the runway, comes to a standstill, or even arrives at the gate. It is only calculated by when one of the plane’s doors is opened.

As part of their legal requirements under EUReg 261, UK based airlines are legally bound to pay compensation for delays or cancellations that are not classed as an extraordinary circumstance.

Article 9 of EU Reg 261 states that airlines must provide passengers with a level of “care and assistance” if their flight is delayed beyond a certain number of hours, regardless of whether the delay or cancellation is the airline’s responsibility or not.

When it comes to claiming flight compensation, some prefer the “do it yourself” approach. Representing yourself in court, or acting as a ‘litigant in person’ to give it its official title, is certainly an option when it comes to making a flight delay claim; but is not without its potential pitfalls.

In the UK, you can claim compensation for eligible flights that departed in the last six years. Airlines often argued that The Montreal Convention 1999 meant passengers had just two years to start your claim.