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⏳ Deadlines

How long you have to claim: the honest answer

People search for “the EU261 time limit” expecting a number. There is not one, and any page that gives you a single figure for Europe is telling you something the regulation does not say. What there is instead is a rule about where the deadline comes from, a genuinely different answer for the UK, and a second set of windows on escalation that run separately from the first.

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The regulation is silent, deliberately

Read Regulation 261/2004 end to end and you will not find a limitation period. It sets out who is covered, what is owed and when the airline is excused, and then stops. Enforcement — including how long you have to go and get it — was left to the legal systems of the states applying it.

The Court of Justice confirmed that reading in Cuadrench Moré v KLM (C-139/11). A passenger whose Shanghai to Barcelona flight was cancelled sued more than three years later; the airline argued the two-year limit in the Warsaw and Montreal Conventions had run out. The Court held those conventions do not govern a 261 compensation claim at all, and that the time limits for actions under Articles 5 and 7 are set by each member state's own rules on limitation, so long as those rules respect equivalence and effectiveness. Two passengers on the same aircraft, claiming in two different countries, can genuinely be on different clocks.

We do not publish a table of national periods. They are amended, they interact with rules about when the period starts running and whether anything suspends it, and a stale figure in either direction does real damage — it either talks someone out of a live claim or leaves them relaxed about one that has expired. Your national enforcement body is the place to get the current figure for your departure country.

The UK now answers it in the text

The UK is the exception, and it became one recently. The Aviation (Consumers) (Amendment) Regulations 2023 inserted three new paragraphs into Article 3 of the retained regulation. Two of them separate a 261 claim from a Montreal Convention damages action. The third, Article 3(9), says that for limitation purposes a claim under the regulation is determined in accordance with section 9 of the Limitation Act 1980.

Section 9 gives six years for an action to recover a sum recoverable by virtue of an enactment, running from when the cause of action accrued. Its stated territorial extent is England and Wales, which is why the UK position needs a page of its own rather than a sentence here.

Read the UK time limits in full →

Which regime is even yours?

Before hunting for a deadline, settle which set of rules the flight falls under, because that decides whose limitation law you are reading. It turns on the departure airport and the operating carrier, not on your nationality or where you bought the ticket. The UK261 guide sets out the UK scope test; the Commission's Your Europe pages set out the EU one.

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.

The second clock: escalation windows

Limitation governs going to court. Getting a complaint in front of a dispute-resolution scheme is a different question with its own timings, and they are shorter.

  • • Before you can escalate. The CAA expects you to have the airline's final response first — or to have waited eight weeks from your written complaint without getting one.
  • • After the final response. The complaint has to reach the scheme within twelve months of that response, or within twelve months of your last written contact where no response came.
  • • How far back the scheme will look. The CAA states that ADR covers issues from the last six years, or five years for consumers living in Scotland.

Declining a scheme's decision does not close the court route, but letting its window pass quietly does close the free one.

What actually goes wrong

The limitation period is rarely what defeats an old claim. Evidence is. A boarding pass, the text message telling you the flight was cancelled, the receipt for the hotel you booked yourself — all of it is trivially available in the week after the flight and awkward to reconstruct a year on. Airline records are not yours to demand at will, and a claim you cannot document is hard to argue however live it technically is.

If you are working through something older, start by pinning down the arrival delay at your final destination, then read the guide for the disruption you had: delays, cancellations, missed connections or denied boarding.

Does EU261 set a deadline for claiming?

No. Regulation 261/2004 creates the right to compensation but fixes no time limit for enforcing it. In Cuadrench Moré v KLM (C-139/11) the Court of Justice held that the time limits for bringing actions for compensation under Articles 5 and 7 are determined in accordance with each member state's own rules on the limitation of actions, provided those rules respect the EU principles of equivalence and effectiveness. It also held that the two-year period in the Warsaw and Montreal Conventions does not apply to such actions.

So how do I find the limit that applies to me?

Work out which country's law would govern a claim — usually tied to where you would bring proceedings, which for an EU airline the Commission's Your Europe guidance says can be the place of departure or the place of arrival. Then check that country's own limitation rules, starting with its national enforcement body. Clairo does not publish a country-by-country table, because those figures are exactly the kind that go stale quietly and mislead someone into thinking they are out of time when they are not.

Is the UK different?

Yes, and it is the clearest case in the group. The Aviation (Consumers) (Amendment) Regulations 2023 inserted Article 3(9) into the UK version of the regulation, which provides that for limitation purposes a claim under it is determined in accordance with section 9 of the Limitation Act 1980. The UK text answers the question on its face, where the EU text still defers to national law.

Is the deadline for escalating a complaint the same one?

No, and this catches people out. The limitation period governs a court claim. Alternative dispute resolution schemes run their own windows on top of it — in the UK the CAA states that a complaint has to reach the scheme within twelve months of the airline's final response, or of your last written contact where no response came. Missing the scheme's window does not necessarily end the underlying claim, but it does close the free route to resolving it.

Does claiming to the airline stop the clock?

Do not assume it does. Whether anything pauses or restarts a limitation period is a question of the law that sets it, and the answer varies. The safe reading is that the clock runs while you wait for a reply, which is a reason to escalate rather than let a claim sit unanswered for months.

Primary sources

Deadlines are the figures most worth checking at source, because they change and because being wrong about one is expensive.

Screen the flight now, argue the deadline later

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.

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Airline guides:

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Clairo publishes general information and an automated eligibility estimate. It is not legal advice, it does not decide claims, and it cannot tell you what caused your disruption. For a disputed or high-value claim, consider independent legal advice.