Bumped from a flight you had booked

The gate announcement is step one of the article

Article 4 has an order to it. Before anyone is refused against their will, the airline is to call for volunteers to give up their reservations in exchange for benefits the two of you agree. Only if too few come forward may it then deny boarding to passengers who did not agree.

So the announcement offering a voucher to take the later flight is not goodwill; it is the first paragraph of the article being performed. And the terms of a volunteer deal are negotiated, not fixed. The CAA puts it as up to you and the airline to agree. Whatever you settle on, Article 4(1) keeps your re-routing or refund rights on top of it — the deal is for the inconvenience, not instead of getting you there.

Volunteering and being bumped are different outcomes

This is the distinction that decides what you can claim afterwards, and it is easy to give away without noticing. Accept the voucher and you volunteered: you took the negotiated benefit, and the fixed compensation for involuntary denied boarding is not what happens next.

Refuse, and be offloaded anyway, and Article 4(3) applies: the airline shall immediately compensate you under Article 7 and assist you under Articles 8 and 9. The CAA's condition is that you checked in for the flight on time.

If the numbers on offer at the gate are not obviously better than the fixed amount for your distance band, that is worth a moment before you say yes.

What being bumped is worth

These are the CAA's published rows. As with delays and cancellations, the halved figure is Article 7(2) at work, applying where the replacement flight brings you in close enough to the original arrival.

• Under 1,500 km
  Arrive two hours or more later — £220
  Less than two hours later — £110
• 1,500 – 3,500 km
  Arrive three hours or more later — £350
  Less than three hours later — £175
• Over 3,500 km
  Arrive four hours or more later — £520
  Less than four hours later — £260

On top of the money, the airline is to offer you the choice between an alternative flight — as soon as possible, or on a later date you pick — and a refund of the unused parts of the ticket. Choose the alternative and care follows while you wait: food and drink, a means to communicate, accommodation and transport if it is the next day. Choose the refund part-way through a journey and the CAA says a flight back to your starting point should come with it.

UK261 sets its own figures in sterling, so UK sterling amounts are set separately from the euro bands and the two regimes are not interchangeable. Clairo's checker currently shows euro estimates only — check current UK CAA guidance for the sterling figures that apply.

Clairo caps its estimate at €400 when both ends of the route are EU/EEA/UK airports, mirroring the intra-Community cap in Article 7(1)(b); it only estimates €600 where one end lies outside that area. Long UK–EU routes sit at the edge of that cap, so treat the figure as an estimate and check the position for your route.

Why this is a stronger position than a delay

Read Articles 4, 5 and 6 next to each other and something stands out. Article 5(3) gives the airline an extraordinary-circumstances defence against cancellation compensation, and Article 6(4) gives it the same defence against delay compensation. Article 4 contains no equivalent paragraph.

What Article 4 has instead is a narrower gate at the front. The CAA describes the law as allowing some circumstances where refusing boarding is reasonable — health, safety or security grounds, or inadequate travel documentation, its example being an invalid passport. Your Europe frames it the same way: you should always receive compensation when denied boarding, the exception being reasonable grounds of that kind. It adds that airlines may still choose to offer something depending on the ticket terms.

So the argument is generally about whether the refusal was for one of those reasons, not about whether the airline could have avoided the disruption. It is a narrower question than the one you get into over extraordinary circumstances.

The connection case

Your Europe covers a situation people rarely recognise as denied boarding at all: your first leg runs late, the airline operating the connecting flight decides you would reach the gate too late, and refuses to board you. Its guidance states that compensation is due in that case. If you were turned away at a transfer desk rather than at your original departure gate, read the missed connection guide alongside this one.

What to do at the gate, and after

• • Ask for the reason for the refusal in writing, there and then.
• • Keep the boarding pass or check-in confirmation showing you presented on time.
• • Do not accept a voucher until you know the fixed amount for your distance band.
• • Note whether you were offered a choice of re-routing or refund, and what you picked.
• • Photograph the gate display and keep any offload notice.

Then claim to the airline, as with any other disruption, and escalate to its dispute-resolution scheme or to the CAA if the answer does not hold up. The route is set out in the UK261 guide, the windows in the time limits guide, and you can run the whole thing yourself.

What the checker can and cannot see here

Clairo's checker quotes euro estimates and applies an intra-Community-style cap that treats UK airports as inside that area. The UK text of Article 7(1) does not use that wording, so on a long UK–EU route the estimate and the legislation can point at different bands. Treat the checker as a screening step, read the article for yourself, and check the sterling figure the CAA publishes for your route.

Denied boarding is not what it screens for. It works from route, distance and arrival delay, so it can band the journey and tell you roughly which tier you are arguing about — but it does not know you were refused a seat, and the distance bands are the only part of this article it reflects.

Primary sources

• Your rights when you are denied boardingUK Civil Aviation Authority

  Volunteering versus being bumped, the amounts by distance, and when refusing boarding is treated as reasonable.

• UK261 Article 4 — denied boardinglegislation.gov.uk

  Volunteers first, then compensation and assistance where boarding is refused against the passenger's will.

• UK261 Article 7 — right to compensationlegislation.gov.uk

  The sterling bands and the 50% reduction where re-routing limits the delay.

• Air passenger rights on Your EuropeEuropean Commission

  The Commission's plain-language explanation of the EU regime, including connecting flights and denied boarding.

• Claiming for costs and compensationUK Civil Aviation Authority

  How to put a claim to an airline, and the note that some airlines require the passenger to come to them first.