UK flight delay compensation, in plain English

First: the airline has to look after you

This is the part people leave on the table. Under Article 6(1) of the UK regulation, care starts once the delay against the scheduled departure passes a threshold set by how far you are going:

• • Two hours for flights under 1,500 km — the CAA's example is Glasgow to Amsterdam.
• • Three hours for 1,500 to 3,500 km — East Midlands to Marrakesh.
• • Four hours for anything longer — London to New York.

Once you are past the line, the CAA says the airline should provide food and drink appropriate to the length of the wait, two phone calls or emails, and — if the delay runs overnight — accommodation plus transport to it. None of that turns on the cause. Fog, a strike, a broken aircraft: the care is the same, and it continues until they get you away.

In practice you will usually be handed a voucher. When the airport is in meltdown and nobody is handing out anything, the CAA's position is that you can make your own reasonable arrangements and claim the cost back. Keep itemised receipts. The regulator is blunt that airlines are unlikely to reimburse luxury hotels or alcohol, so “reasonable” is doing real work in that sentence.

Five hours: you can walk away

If the delay reaches five hours you no longer have to travel. You can abandon the flight and take a refund for the parts of the ticket you have not used. If you are mid-journey the airline should also get you back to where you started. This is a choice, not a default — take it only if you genuinely no longer want to go, because choosing it ends the re-routing option.

Then: does the delay become a compensation claim?

Compensation is measured at the other end of the journey, not at the gate. The trigger is arriving at your final destination three hours or more behind schedule. Since the 2023 amendment that rule sits in the UK text itself, at Article 6(3), rather than being read into it from case law.

Two things then decide whether anything is payable. The first is the distance, which sets the band. The second is the cause, which is the one you cannot look up.

• 🛫 1,500 km or less — £220
• 🛫 Between 1,500 and 3,500 km — £350
• 🛫 Over 3,500 km — £520

One wrinkle worth knowing on the long-haul band: the CAA publishes £260 rather than £520 where you arrive between three and four hours late on a flight over 3,500 km. That is Article 7(2), the 50% reduction, showing up in the regulator's table. The figures are per passenger, so a family of four claims four times, and they have nothing to do with what the tickets cost.

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.

The cause: what “extraordinary circumstances” means

An airline is excused from compensation where it shows the delay was caused by something outside its responsibility that it could not have avoided even taking all reasonable measures. The CAA lists the categories it treats as likely to qualify: weather incompatible with safe operation, strikes unrelated to the airline such as air traffic control or border force, terrorism or sabotage, security risks, civil unrest, and hidden manufacturing defects.

Technical faults are the contested ground, and the CAA sets out where it landed. It points to the English Court of Appeal's 2014 decision in Jet2 v Huzar as having settled in the UK that technical problems are not an extraordinary circumstance, and to the European court in KLM v van der Lans reaching the same conclusion, while noting two faults that may be different: a hidden manufacturing defect, and damage from sabotage or terrorism. If you are told a technical fault was extraordinary, that is the CAA page to read before you accept it.

The practical move is simple: ask what the event was and what evidence supports it. A refusal with no named cause is not an answer, and the burden of proving the exception sits with the airline.

Putting the claim in

Nothing is paid automatically — the CAA says so directly. You claim to the airline, and expenses and compensation may be two separate submissions on two separate forms. Have your booking reference, flight number and date, both airports, the actual arrival time at your final destination, the number of passengers, and receipts for anything you are reclaiming.

Send it in writing so there is a record, and keep a copy of what you sent. If the answer is no, or eight weeks pass with no final response, the complaint can be escalated — to the airline's approved dispute-resolution scheme if it has one, or to the CAA's own complaints team if it does not. That escalation is free, and you can run it yourself.

There are deadlines on both the claim and the escalation, and they are different deadlines. See how long you have to claim in the UK.

Where Clairo fits

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.

For the full legal picture rather than the passenger's-eye view, read what UK261 actually says. If your flight was cancelled rather than delayed, or you missed a connection, those run on different rules — see cancelled flights and missed connections.

Primary sources

• Your rights when a flight is delayedUK Civil Aviation Authority

  Care thresholds, the sterling compensation figures and how connecting bookings are measured.

• Am I entitled to compensation?UK Civil Aviation Authority

  How the regulator frames extraordinary circumstances, including the cases it points to on technical faults.

• 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.

• UK261 Article 6 — delaylegislation.gov.uk

  Care thresholds by distance, and the paragraph that puts the three-hour arrival-delay right in the UK text itself.

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

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

• Tips on complaining to an airlineUK Civil Aviation Authority

  The regulator's own advice on writing a claim, including a template.