legislation.gov.uk, quoted verbatim
Air passenger rights in United Kingdom
What the United Kingdom regime gives a disrupted passenger, event by event, quoted from legislation.gov.uk and dated.
- rules quoted word for word
- 9
- questions the instrument does not answer
- 1
- the day these pages were read
- 2026-09-10
Every disruption, as the instrument states it
| What went wrong | What the instrument says | Source |
|---|---|---|
| How much the payment is | (a) £220 for all flights of 1500 kilometres or less; (b) £350 for all flights between 1500 and 3500 kilometres; (c) £520 for all flights not falling under (a) or (b). | Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 article 7, Right to compensation (legislation.gov.uk) read September 2026 |
| A long delay | In case of a delay of three hours or more in reaching the final destination, the passengers concerned have the right to compensation laid down in Article 7. | Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 article 6, Delay (legislation.gov.uk) read September 2026 |
| A cancelled flight | have the right to compensation by the operating air carrier in accordance with Article 7, unless: (i) they are informed of the cancellation at least two weeks before the scheduled time of departure | Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 article 5, Cancellation (legislation.gov.uk) read September 2026 |
| Being denied boarding | If boarding is denied to passengers against their will, the operating air carrier shall immediately compensate them in accordance with Article 7 and assist them in accordance with Articles 8 and 9. | Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 article 4, Denied boarding (legislation.gov.uk) read September 2026 |
| Getting your money back | reimbursement within seven days, by the means provided for in Article 7(3), of the full cost of the ticket at the price at which it was bought, for the part or parts of the journey not made | Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 article 8, Right to reimbursement or re-routing (legislation.gov.uk) read September 2026 |
| Being flown another way | re-routing, under comparable transport conditions, to their final destination at the earliest opportunity | Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 article 8, Right to reimbursement or re-routing (legislation.gov.uk) read September 2026 |
| Meals, a hotel and transport while you wait | passengers shall be offered free of charge: (a) meals and refreshments in a reasonable relation to the waiting time; (b) hotel accommodation in cases where a stay of one or more nights becomes necessary | Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 article 9, Right to care (legislation.gov.uk) read September 2026 |
| When the airline does not have to pay | An operating air carrier shall not be obliged to pay compensation in accordance with Article 7, if it can prove that the cancellation is caused by extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken. | Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 article 5, Cancellation (legislation.gov.uk) read September 2026 |
| Being asked to give up your seat | it shall first call for volunteers to surrender their reservations in exchange for benefits under conditions to be agreed between the passenger concerned and the operating air carrier | Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 article 4, Denied boarding (legislation.gov.uk) read September 2026 |
| How long the airline has to answer you | Regulation (EC) No 261/2004, contents (legislation.gov.uk) carries no such rule on the section read here (Regulation (EC) No 261/2004, contents (legislation.gov.uk), read September 2026). Read on the Regulation's own contents page: its nineteen articles cover denied boarding, cancellation, delay, upgrading and downgrading, care, redress, the obligation to inform and enforcement, and none of them puts a clock on the airline's reply. In the United Kingdom the timetable a passenger can hold an airline to comes from the airline's own complaints policy and from the Alternative Dispute Resolution scheme it belongs to, not from this instrument. | Regulation (EC) No 261/2004, contents (legislation.gov.uk) read September 2026 |
An absence here means the instrument carries no such rule, never that an airline will not pay: several carriers promise more than the law requires in their own conditions of carriage, and that promise is contractual.
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United Kingdom: 9 air passenger entitlement rules quoted verbatim from the instrument itself and 1 recorded absences (FlightDelayHQ Air Passenger Entitlement Index).
Cite as: "FlightDelayHQ Air Passenger Entitlement Index: United Kingdom", updated 2026-09-10, https://flightdelayhq.com/rights/united-kingdom/.
Download the United Kingdom table (CSV), free to reuse with citation.