Flight delay compensation: what the rule actually says
Two documents decide almost every flight compensation question in the United Kingdom and the United States, and between them they are perhaps eight pages long. One is Regulation 261/2004 as it was retained in UK law, which gives a passenger a fixed sum for a long delay, a late cancellation or a denied boarding, and gives it whether the ticket cost forty pounds or four hundred. The other is Title 14 of the US Code of Federal Regulations, which gives a passenger their fare back and, for an involuntary bumping, a percentage of it, and gives them nothing at all for a delay. Almost everything written about these two regimes is written by somebody who would like a share of the claim. This page is about reading them: which one reaches your flight, what it says in its own words, and what to do with the answer.
- rules quoted word for word
- 15
- questions the instrument does not answer
- 5
- regimes read
- 2
Every rule on this page comes from the FlightDelayHQ air passenger entitlement index: 15 quotations from the instruments themselves across 2 jurisdictions, each with the page it is on and the date it was read.
- 15 rules quoted verbatimEach one is a passage from the instrument's own page, not a summary of it.
- Every quote dated and checkableThe page each quote came from is kept as text as it read on the day, last 2026-09-10.
- 2 jurisdictionsWhere a regime carries no such rule, the site says so and names the section that was read.
How to read your own entitlement
- Work out which regime reaches your flight, because usually only one does. The retained Regulation covers any flight departing a UK airport, and a flight arriving in the UK where the operating carrier is a UK or EU airline. The US rules cover scheduled flights to, from or within the United States. A London to New York flight on a British carrier is therefore inside UK261 in both directions; the same route on a US carrier is inside it leaving London and outside it coming back. That single fact decides more claims than any argument about what caused the delay, and it is why the two jurisdiction pages on this site are worth reading side by side before anything else.
- Read the event, not the excuse. Both instruments are organised by what happened to you rather than by what the airline says caused it. A delay of three hours or more in reaching your final destination, a cancellation you were told about less than two weeks out, a boarding denied against your will: each of those has its own article or section, and each carries its own consequence. The cause matters afterwards, and only under one of the two regimes.
- Notice what the regime does not say, because that is usually the answer. The most useful column on this site is the one recording what an instrument does not carry. The United States pays nothing for a delay and nothing for a cancellation; Part 260 is titled Refunds and stops at the fare. It requires no meal and no hotel: section 259.5 lists the fourteen subjects an airline's Customer Service Plan must address and neither is among them. It has no extraordinary-circumstances test, because it has no payment for such a test to remove. A passenger who learns only that has learned why their US carrier offered a voucher and not a cheque.
- Claim direct first, because it costs nothing. Every route to the money except one is free. Write to the airline with the flight number, the date, the scheduled and actual arrival times and the sum you say is due; the UK Regulation puts the burden of proving it told you about a cancellation on the airline, not on you. If the airline refuses or goes quiet, an ADR scheme or the Civil Aviation Authority will look at it for nothing in the UK, and a US carrier must acknowledge a written complaint within 30 days and answer it within 60. A claims company is the paid option and takes a share; it is a convenience, never a requirement.
- Keep the citation with the date. Instruments are amended, and both of these have been recently: the UK compensation figures were substituted in 2019 when the Regulation was retained, and the three-hour delay right was written into article 6 in December 2023. A quotation is only useful with the URL and the day it was read, because that is what lets the next person check whether it still says that. Every cell on this site carries both, and the text of every page read is committed beside it.
Common questions
- Is this legal advice?
- No. Every cell is a quotation from the instrument itself with a link to the page it is on. It tells you what the rule says, not what you should do and not whether you will win. Whether an airline pays turns on facts about your flight that no website knows.
- How much is a delayed flight worth in the UK?
- The retained Regulation sets the figure by distance rather than by ticket price, and article 7 states the three bands in its own words. The quotation, with the page and the date it was read, is on the United Kingdom jurisdiction page on this site. It is a fixed sum, so a cheap ticket and an expensive one on the same route are worth the same.
- Do I get anything for a delayed flight in the United States?
- Not as compensation. The US rules give a refund of the fare where a flight is cancelled or significantly delayed and the passenger chooses not to travel, and they give a percentage of the fare for an involuntary denied boarding. Nothing in Part 260 or Part 259 pays a passenger a sum on top of their fare for a delay, and this site records that as an absence on the section that would carry it.
- Does weather stop me claiming?
- Under the UK Regulation the airline is excused where it can prove the disruption was caused by extraordinary circumstances that could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken, and article 5(3) puts that in its own words along with where the burden of proof sits. It is an excuse the airline must make out, not a box it can tick. The US regime has no such test at all, because it has no delay or cancellation payment for a test to remove.
- Do I have to use a claims company?
- No, and it is worth saying plainly: you can claim direct with the airline for nothing, and if it refuses, the ADR or regulator route after it also costs nothing. A claims company keeps a share of whatever it recovers. If you choose one through a link on this site we are paid a commission by it, which is why that link is marked as paid and why it is never the first thing offered.
- Why does this site not show my flight's status?
- Because it has no flight-data feed, and a page that pretended otherwise would be answering you badly on the one question where a stale answer is worse than none. Live status changes minute to minute and belongs to the airline's own app and to the trackers that buy the feed. What you are owed once the flight has gone wrong does not change minute to minute, and that is what is here.
Ask about your own flight
Air passenger rights by jurisdiction
Cite or embed this figure
What a delayed, cancelled or overbooked flight is worth: 15 air passenger entitlement rules quoted verbatim from the instrument itself and 5 recorded absences (FlightDelayHQ Air Passenger Entitlement Index).
Cite as: "FlightDelayHQ Air Passenger Entitlement Index: What a delayed, cancelled or overbooked flight is worth", updated 2026-09-10, https://flightdelayhq.com/flight-delay-compensation/.