How much compensation are you owed for your delayed flight?

How it works

EU Regulation 261/2004 gives air passengers a fixed sum when they reach their final destination three hours or more late, when a flight is cancelled at short notice, or when they are bumped from an overbooked flight. It covers every flight leaving the EU, Iceland, Norway or Switzerland, and flights into the EU on an EU airline. Since 2021 the UK has its own copy, UK 261, with amounts in pounds.

The amount depends only on the great-circle distance: €250 up to 1,500 km, €400 from 1,500 to 3,500 km (and for any longer flight within the EU), and €600 beyond (UK 261: £220, £350 and £520). It is halved when a replacement flight gets you there within 2, 3 or 4 hours of the original time for those three bands, and for a delay of 3 to 4 hours on a flight over 3,500 km. Example: Helsinki to London is about 1,845 km, so a 3 h 20 min late arrival gives €400.

The regulation itself only mentions cancellations; the EU Court of Justice ruled in Sturgeon (C-402/07, 2009) that a delay of three hours or more is compensated the same way, and in Folkerts (C-11/11) that the delay counts at the final destination. The airline owes nothing for a delay or cancellation caused by extraordinary circumstances it could not avoid with all reasonable measures, such as storms or air traffic control restrictions, but ordinary technical faults (Wallentin-Hermann, C-549/07) and strikes by its own staff (Krüsemann, C-195/17) don't count.