Flight Delay & Cancellation Compensation Calculator

Quick answer: on a flight from the EU or the UK — or into them on an EU or UK airline — a delay of 3 hours or more at your final destination, a late cancellation or being bumped is worth €250, €400 or €600 (£220, £350 or £520) per passenger, by distance. US law pays nothing for a delay: it gives a refund, and cash when you are bumped.

How to use it

Pick the airport the flight left from and your final destination, where the airline is based, and what happened. The calculator works out the distance the way the EU regulation does (a great circle between the airports), finds every law that covers the flight — sometimes two — and says what each gives one passenger, with the reason. It is what the law says; the airline decides your claim, and a court any dispute.

What each law pays, by distance

EU rules cover every flight leaving the EU, Iceland, Norway or Switzerland, and flights into them on an airline based there. UK rules cover every flight leaving the UK, and flights into it on a UK or EU airline. A London–Paris flight on an EU airline is covered by both: claim under one.

When you are owed it

• Delayed: 3 hours or more late at your final destination — the time the doors opened, not the time you took off. On the longest flights, arriving 3 to 4 hours late, the UK pays £260 and the EU says the airline may halve its €600.
• Cancelled: nothing if you were told 14 days or more ahead. With 7 to 13 days’ notice, nothing if the new flight left no more than 2 hours earlier and landed less than 4 hours later; with under 7 days, no more than 1 hour earlier and less than 2 hours later. Otherwise the full amount — halved if the new flight landed within 2, 3 or 4 hours, by distance.
• Bumped (denied boarding against your will): the same amounts, unless there were reasonable grounds such as health, safety, security or missing travel documents.

Either way the airline also owes you a refund or another flight, and meals and drinks while you wait, once a delay passes 2, 3 or 4 hours by distance.

Extraordinary circumstances

No compensation is owed when the airline can show the cause was out of its hands. The EU’s examples: air traffic management decisions, political instability, adverse weather conditions and security risks. Technical failures and the airline’s own staff strikes do not count. So ask the airline for the cause in writing: “operational reasons” is not an answer.

Flights in and from the US

US law has no compensation for a delay. What the Department of Transportation requires is a full refund of the fare, taxes and fees when a flight is cancelled or changed by 3 hours or more on a domestic trip (6 hours on an international one) and you choose not to fly it or take a voucher. If you are bumped from an oversold flight leaving a US airport, you are owed nothing when the airline gets you there within an hour of your original arrival; 200% of the one-way fare, up to $1,075, when it is 1 to 2 hours late (1 to 4 on an international flight); and 400%, up to $2,150, beyond that.

How to claim it yourself

Write to the airline with your booking reference, the flight, the date and what happened, and ask for the amount the law sets. If it refuses or does not answer: in the EU, the national enforcement body of the country where it happened; in the UK, after eight weeks, the airline’s Alternative Dispute Resolution provider or the CAA. You do not need a claims company: the airline owes you the same amount, and a claims company keeps a share of it.

Before you fly

Choosing the airline is the one decision you control: the best airlines to fly to Italy, and to London, the best business class to Europe, and which US cities fly non-stop to London — a non-stop has one less flight to go wrong.