Flight delay compensation: how to claim for travel misery

Summer is upon us and many of us will be planning to head abroad for a break in the sunshine. The number of people flying each year is on the rise, and so to is the number of delayed or cancelled flights.

A punctuality report from the Civil Aviation Authority reveals that the number of flights departing on time from the UK's ten main airports fell to 79 per cent in 2014.

If you find your travel plans disrupted by delays, you could well be due compensation. Back in 2012 the EU extended a law known as the Denied Boarding Regulation to cover financial compensation as well as free refreshments and accommodation, if your flight is cancelled or delayed by more than three hours.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Depending on how long you are delayed for, and how far you were travelling, you could recoup up to €600. But, you need to understand the rules.

First, you have to be travelling on a flight within the EU (in this instance that includes Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland) and the flight has to be operated by an EU-based airline.

If you are delayed you should make your compensation request to the airline you were travelling with. Once they have responded to your request, if you are still unhappy, you can take your complaint to the CAA.

In the past a lot of airlines wriggled out of paying compensation by stating that the delay was due to "extraordinary circumstances". Often the airlines would interpret this get out clause in entirely implausible ways. A Court of Appeal victory last year for a passenger has massively restricted what classes as an "extraordinary circumstance". It is now very difficult for airlines to use this excuse if there was a technical fault, but it does still stand if bad weather caused the delays.

If you find yourself delayed and think you are entitled to compensation then the first step is to get in touch with your airline. You need to tell them what happened, how long you were delayed and why you think you are entitled to compensation. Make sure you mention the EU rule – it is known as EC regulation 261/2004.

Also, check that you are complaining to the right airline – in some cases it may not be the company you booked with. For example, you might have booked with British Airways but been on one of its partner airlines flights such as Iberia or Finnair. If that is the case you need to complain to the airline that operated the flight, which would be Finnair or Iberia in this example.

The next step is to complain to the CAA if the airline doesn't offer a timely response or you aren't happy with what it says.

These rules can also help you if you were delayed on flights in the past. You can make a claim for compensation for flights going back as far as 2005. If you can't remember exactly how long your delay was you can check on at Flightstats.co.uk.