This is a free flight compensation checker for passengers whose flight to or from the EU or the UK was delayed, cancelled or overbooked, that tells you whether the airline owes you money under EU261 or UK261 and how much.
Your delayed flight qualifies under EU261. The airline owes you €250.
Claim it in writing. The airline has to pay in cash or to your bank account, and cannot fob you off with a voucher unless you agree in writing.
Showing an example flight. Change any field above to check your own.
Compensation is a flat amount set by the distance of your flight, measured in a straight line from where you took off to your final destination. It has nothing to do with what you paid for the ticket. A €39 seat and a €900 seat on the same delayed flight are owed exactly the same.
| Flight distance | EU261 | UK261 |
|---|---|---|
| 1,500 km or less | €250 | £220 |
| Over 1,500 km inside the EU | €400 | £350 |
| 1,500 km to 3,500 km | €400 | £350 |
| Over 3,500 km | €600 | £520 |
You are covered if you took off from any airport in the EU, Iceland, Norway or Switzerland, no matter which airline you flew. You are also covered if you landed in one of those countries on an EU-based airline. The UK runs its own copy of the same rules: taking off from a UK airport on any airline, or landing in the UK on a UK or EU airline.
So Madrid to New York on American Airlines is covered, because it left Spain. New York to Madrid on American Airlines is not, because it neither left the EU nor arrived on an EU carrier. The same trip on Iberia is covered in both directions.
A delay pays when you reach your final destination three hours or more late. What matters is the arrival time at the end of the whole ticket, not the departure time and not the middle leg. If a one-hour delay in Frankfurt made you miss a connection and you got to Bangkok five hours late, that is a five-hour delay.
If you were rerouted and still arrived only moderately late, the airline may pay half the amount instead of the full one. If you were bumped from an overbooked flight against your will, you are owed compensation whatever the reason — overbooking is never an excuse.
Airlines do not have to pay for extraordinary circumstances: things outside their control. Bad weather, air traffic control restrictions, airport or security strikes, political unrest, and bird strikes all count. These genuinely do cancel your claim.
What does not count, despite what the airline may tell you at the desk: a technical or mechanical fault with the aircraft, a strike by the airline's own staff, a missing crew member, and a knock-on delay caused by that same aircraft running late earlier in the day. Courts have ruled on all four. These are treated as part of running an airline, and they pay.
If the airline never gave you a reason, claim anyway. The burden of proof sits with the airline, not with you. They have to prove the circumstance was extraordinary; you do not have to prove it wasn't.
Separately from compensation, once you are delayed 2 hours or more the airline owes you meals, drinks, two phone calls, and a hotel plus transfers if you are stuck overnight. This applies even in bad weather, when no compensation is due. Keep every receipt: if they hand you nothing, you can claim the cost back.
The deadline depends on the country you would sue in, and it is usually generous. The United Kingdom allows 6 years (5 in Scotland), France and Spain 5 years, Germany 3 years, and Italy and the Netherlands 2 years. An old flight from a few years ago is very often still claimable.
Write to the airline directly, in one email: your booking reference, the flight number and date, how late you arrived, and the sentence "I am claiming compensation under Regulation EC 261/2004." Give them 14 days. If they refuse or go quiet, escalate free of charge to the national enforcement body in the departure country — the Civil Aviation Authority in the UK, or the equivalent regulator in the EU state you flew from.
Claim companies do the same work for you and keep a cut, typically 25 to 35 percent of the payout. That is worth it if the airline is stonewalling you or the paperwork is going nowhere, and a waste of money if they would have paid on the first email.