EU Regulation 261/2004 gives air passengers a right to assistance, to a refund or re-routing, and to fixed financial compensation of 250, 400 or 600 euro when a flight is cancelled at short notice, when boarding is denied, or when the passenger reaches the final destination three hours or more late. It applies to every flight departing from an airport in the European Union, and to flights arriving in the Union operated by a Union carrier. The compensation is owed by the operating air carrier, is independent of the ticket price, and is due in addition to any refund and to the meals, communications and accommodation the carrier must provide during the disruption.
When Regulation 261/2004 applies to your flight
Scope is decided by geography and by the identity of the operating carrier, not by your nationality or where you bought the ticket. The Regulation applies to passengers departing from an airport in a member state, whatever airline operates the flight, and to passengers arriving at an airport in a member state from a third country only where the operating carrier is a Union carrier. A flight from New York to Amsterdam therefore falls under the Regulation if it is operated by KLM, and falls outside it if it is operated by a United States carrier; a flight from Amsterdam to New York is covered either way.
Through the Agreement on the European Economic Area the Regulation also applies in Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein, and it applies to Switzerland under the air transport agreement between the Union and Switzerland. It does not apply to the United Kingdom, which since leaving the Union has its own retained version of the rules; a flight from London to Amsterdam on a British carrier is governed by the United Kingdom regime on departure, not by Regulation 261/2004. The Regulation does apply in the outermost regions of the Union, including the Canary Islands, Madeira, the Azores and the French overseas departments.
The conditions you have to meet yourself
Three conditions attach to the passenger rather than to the flight. You must hold a confirmed reservation on the flight concerned. You must present yourself for check-in at the time indicated by the carrier or, if no time was indicated, no later than forty-five minutes before the published departure time; this condition does not apply where the flight is cancelled, because there is then nothing to check in for. And your ticket must have been available to the public, directly or indirectly, at a fare that was not a reduced fare unavailable to other passengers. Tickets issued under a frequent flyer programme do count; staff tickets and other non-public fares do not.
Two further limits are easily missed. Where a passenger arriving in the Union from a third country has already received compensation and assistance in that third country, the Regulation does not apply again to the same disruption. And where a flight forms part of a package holiday, the Regulation applies alongside the package travel rules, so a traveller may have rights against both the operating carrier and the organiser; what the Regulation does not do is give a second recovery for the same loss.
Connecting flights are treated as a single journey when they are booked on one reservation. The Court of Justice has held that a passenger who misses a connection because the first leg was delayed, and who as a result reaches the final destination three hours or more late, is entitled to compensation even though the delay on the individual leg was shorter. Where the itinerary is booked on one reservation with a Union carrier, that principle applies even to a leg operated outside the Union by a partner airline.
What you can claim, and why the rights do not cancel each other out
The Regulation grants four distinct entitlements, and airlines routinely present one of them as if it discharged the others. It does not. A hotel room is not a substitute for compensation, and a refund is not a substitute for care.
The right to care covers meals and refreshments in reasonable relation to the waiting time, two telephone calls or messages, and, where an overnight stay becomes necessary, hotel accommodation and transport between the airport and the hotel. Care is owed as soon as the waiting threshold is reached: two hours for flights of 1,500 kilometres or less, three hours for longer intra-Union flights and other flights between 1,500 and 3,500 kilometres, and four hours for all other flights. If the airline provides nothing, keep the receipts and claim the reasonable costs back; that is a separate claim from the compensation.
The right to reimbursement or re-routing gives you a choice, and the choice is yours rather than the carrier's. You may take a full refund of the unused part of the ticket within seven days, together with a return flight to your first point of departure where the journey no longer serves any purpose, or re-routing to your final destination at the earliest opportunity, or re-routing at a later date that suits you. A carrier that simply rebooks you without asking has not complied with the Regulation.
The right to compensation is the fixed sum described below. It is due unless the carrier proves an extraordinary circumstance, and it is owed regardless of whether you actually suffered any financial loss.
Finally, if you are placed in a lower class than the one you paid for, the carrier must reimburse a percentage of the price of the ticket, on a scale that rises with the distance of the flight. Being upgraded, by contrast, cannot be charged for. Carriers must also display a notice at check-in telling passengers where to obtain the text of their rights, and must hand a written notice of those rights to every passenger affected by a cancellation or a long delay. That obligation is separate and is enforced by the national authorities.
Compensation amounts and distance bands
Compensation is a fixed sum determined only by the distance of the flight, calculated by the great circle method between the departure airport and the final destination. It is 250 euro for flights of 1,500 kilometres or less; 400 euro for intra-Union flights of more than 1,500 kilometres and for all other flights between 1,500 and 3,500 kilometres; and 600 euro for every other flight. A passenger who paid 49 euro for a seat and a passenger who paid 1,900 euro for the seat beside it receive the same amount.
Because the calculation runs to the final destination, a journey booked on a single reservation is measured end to end. An itinerary from Amsterdam to Bangkok with a change in Dubai is one journey of more than 3,500 kilometres, not two shorter flights, and a carrier that splits the route in its own calculation is understating what it owes.
The carrier may halve the compensation, but only in one situation: where it offered re-routing to the final destination on an alternative flight and the arrival time of that alternative does not exceed the original scheduled arrival time by more than two hours for the shortest band, three hours for the middle band, or four hours for the longest. If you decline re-routing and take the refund instead, the reduction does not apply. The burden of proving that acceptable re-routing was offered, and that you arrived within the window, lies with the carrier.
Delay, cancellation and denied boarding: three different triggers
The Regulation deals with three events, and which one applies determines what you can claim. Carriers have an obvious interest in calling a cancellation a delay, so it is worth knowing the difference.
Long delay
The text of the Regulation gives delayed passengers care, and a refund once the delay reaches five hours, but says nothing about compensation. The right to compensation for delay comes from the Court of Justice, which held in the Sturgeon judgment of 2009, confirmed in Nelson in 2012, that passengers who reach their final destination three hours or more after the scheduled arrival time suffer the same loss of time as passengers whose flight was cancelled and must be treated in the same way. That three-hour rule is now the single most important threshold in European passenger law.
Arrival time means the moment at which at least one of the aircraft doors is opened and passengers are permitted to leave, not the moment the wheels touch the runway and not the moment the aircraft reaches the stand. On a marginal delay that distinction decides the claim, which is why a photograph of the door opening, with a timestamp, is worth more than an argument.
Cancellation
A cancellation triggers care, a choice between reimbursement and re-routing, and compensation, but the compensation depends entirely on notice. No compensation is due if the carrier informed you of the cancellation at least two weeks before the scheduled departure. Between two weeks and seven days before departure, compensation falls away only if you were offered re-routing departing no more than two hours before the original departure and reaching the final destination less than four hours after the original arrival. Less than seven days before departure, the corresponding windows narrow to one hour early and two hours late. Outside those windows compensation is due in full.
The burden of proving that the passenger was informed, and when, rests on the operating carrier. An entry in the carrier's own system is not by itself proof that the message reached you, and where a booking was made through an agent the carrier remains responsible for the notification.
Denied boarding
Denied boarding covers more than overbooking: it is any refusal to carry a passenger who presented himself for boarding on time with a confirmed reservation, unless there are reasonable grounds such as missing travel documents or reasons of health, safety or security. Before denying boarding involuntarily, the carrier must first call for volunteers willing to surrender their reservation in exchange for benefits agreed between them and the carrier. Volunteers who give up their seat still keep the right to a refund or re-routing.
If nobody volunteers and you are refused boarding, compensation is due immediately, at the same amounts, together with care and the choice between reimbursement and re-routing. There is no waiting period and no need to show a delay at arrival. Rights under the Regulation cannot be limited or waived in advance, so a clause in the carrier's conditions of carriage that purports to exclude them has no effect.
Extraordinary circumstances: what the Court of Justice has actually decided
A carrier escapes the compensation obligation if it proves that the cancellation or delay was caused by extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken. Both elements have to be proved, and carriers frequently prove neither. The burden of proof is entirely on the airline.
The Court of Justice has held that an event is extraordinary only where it is not inherent in the normal exercise of the carrier's activity and lies outside its actual control. Applying that test, the case law has produced a reasonably clear picture.
Technical problems are normally not extraordinary. A defect that comes to light during maintenance, or that is the consequence of the wear and functioning of the aircraft, is inherent in running an airline. That remains so even where the fault appeared without warning. The exceptions are narrow: a hidden manufacturing defect disclosed by the manufacturer or a safety authority, damage caused by sabotage or terrorism, and damage caused by an external event such as a bird strike or a collision with a foreign object.
Strikes depend on who is striking. A strike by air traffic controllers or airport staff is external to the carrier and can be extraordinary. A strike by the carrier's own pilots or cabin crew, including one called by a trade union in the course of ordinary collective bargaining, is part of the normal exercise of its activity and is not extraordinary. A spontaneous mass absence of staff following a company announcement is likewise not extraordinary.
Weather is extraordinary only when it actually prevented the flight. Conditions that make take-off or landing unsafe, an airport closure or the closure of airspace qualify. What does not qualify is a carrier pointing to weather earlier in the day, or at another airport, without showing how it made this flight impossible despite reasonable rescheduling.
An extraordinary cause is only half the defence. The carrier must also show it took all reasonable measures: rescheduling, using a reserve aircraft or crew, or re-routing the passenger on another carrier's flight. A carrier that had a way to get you there and did not use it cannot rely on the extraordinary circumstance.
The practical consequence is that a one-line refusal citing operational or technical reasons is not a defence. Ask the carrier to state which event it relies on, on what date and at what time, and what measures it took. Carriers that cannot answer those three questions usually pay.
How to make a claim, and how long you have
Start on the day of the disruption. Ask the ground staff for the reason in writing, photograph the departure board and the arrival gate clock, note the time the doors opened, and keep the boarding pass and the booking confirmation. If the carrier provides no meals or accommodation, buy what is reasonable and keep the receipts. Written evidence gathered at the airport is worth far more than a reconstruction six months later.
Then write to the operating carrier, not to the travel agent or the ticket seller, because the Regulation places the obligations on the airline that operated or intended to operate the flight. State the flight number and date, the booking reference, what happened, the distance band and the exact sum claimed, and attach the evidence. Set a reasonable period for payment and keep proof of sending.
If the carrier refuses or does not answer, the next step is the national enforcement body. In the Netherlands that is the Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate (Inspectie Leefomgeving en Transport), which handles complaints about flights departing from Dutch airports and about flights into the Netherlands operated by Union carriers. The Inspectorate supervises compliance and can act against carriers that structurally fail to meet their obligations, but it does not order payment to an individual passenger. For the money itself you need the carrier's agreement or a court judgment.
On timing, the Regulation itself contains no limitation period. The Court of Justice held in Cuadrench Moré, in November 2012, that the two-year period of the Montreal Convention does not apply to these claims and that the time limit is a matter for the national law of each member state. That means the period differs sharply across the Union, from about a year in some states to five years or more in others. In the Netherlands the position is not settled: some courts apply the short limitation period for claims under a contract of carriage by air, others the general period for contractual claims. Because that difference decides whether a claim survives at all, the prudent course is to assume the shorter period and to interrupt limitation in writing well before the second anniversary of the flight.
Enforcing a claim in the Netherlands
Dutch courts hear a large number of passenger claims and apply the case law of the Court of Justice directly. Jurisdiction is generous: for a flight within the Union, the passenger may sue at the place of departure or at the place of arrival, at his choice, and may in addition sue the carrier where it is domiciled. A passenger whose flight departed from Amsterdam, Eindhoven, Rotterdam or Maastricht can therefore bring the claim in the Netherlands even if the airline is established elsewhere in the Union.
Compensation claims are almost always money claims well below the statutory limit for the subdistrict court, so they are heard by the kantonrechter. That has two practical advantages: legal representation is not compulsory, and the procedure is comparatively quick and inexpensive. Court fees are payable in advance on a scale set by law and indexed annually, and the losing party is normally ordered to pay a fixed contribution to the winner's costs. Our overview of small claims procedures in the Netherlands explains how these cases run, and our page on civil law sets out the wider procedural framework.
Where the airline is established in another member state and you prefer to sue there, the European small claims procedure is often the cheapest route, and a Dutch judgment can in any event be enforced elsewhere in the Union without an intermediate declaration of enforceability. As a firm with a cross-border practice, our European law team regularly handles claims against carriers established outside the Netherlands.
Claims the Regulation does not cover
Regulation 261/2004 compensates loss of time, in a standardised way, and nothing else. Damage that goes beyond that is governed by other rules, and confusing the two leads to claims being brought under the wrong heading.
Baggage that is lost, damaged or delayed falls under the Montreal Convention, applied within the Union through Regulation 2027/97. Liability there is limited to an amount expressed in special drawing rights and reviewed periodically, damage must be notified to the carrier within short deadlines after receipt of the baggage, and the claim requires proof of actual loss rather than a fixed sum. Declaring a higher value at check-in against a supplement raises the limit.
Assistance for passengers with a disability or reduced mobility is governed by a separate regulation, which obliges airports and carriers to provide assistance free of charge and prohibits a refusal to carry on grounds of disability except where safety requirements or the size of the aircraft make it impossible. Notification in advance improves the service but is not a condition of the right.
Additional damage, such as a missed connection outside the booking, a wasted hotel night or a lost day of a business trip, can be claimed under the ordinary rules of contract and the Montreal Convention. The Regulation expressly preserves the right to claim further compensation, although the standardised amount may be deducted from it. Those claims require proof of the loss and are not automatic.
Claim agencies, assignment and the cost of recovery
Many passengers hand the claim to a commercial claim agency in return for a percentage of what is recovered, often a third or more. That is a legitimate arrangement: a monetary claim can be assigned under Dutch law by deed and notice to the debtor, and Dutch courts accept assigned passenger claims. It is worth knowing what you give up. The agency keeps its share even where the carrier pays in full without resistance, and some agencies accept a reduced settlement because a quick partial payment suits their business model better than a contested case.
The alternative is to claim yourself, which costs nothing but a letter, and to instruct a lawyer only if the carrier refuses. Where a claim is won in court the losing carrier is ordered to pay a contribution to legal costs, and for a group travelling on the same booking the amounts add up quickly, since compensation is per passenger and a family of four on a long-haul flight is claiming a four-figure sum. Carriers also sometimes challenge assignments on technical grounds, which is a delay a passenger claiming in his own name does not encounter.
What the Regulation requires of airlines and travel businesses
The obligations run in one direction, but they are enforced. An operating carrier must display a clearly legible notice at check-in telling passengers where to obtain the text of their rights, and must give every passenger affected by denied boarding, cancellation or a delay of at least two hours a written notice setting out the rules on compensation and assistance and the contact details of the national enforcement body. Failure to inform is a breach in itself, independent of whether compensation was ultimately paid.
Member States must lay down penalties for infringement, and in the Netherlands the Human Environment and Transport Inspectorate supervises compliance and can impose administrative measures on carriers operating from Dutch airports. Complaints filed with the Inspectorate feed into that supervision even when they do not produce payment in the individual case, which is a reason to file one rather than to give up quietly.
For travel businesses the practical exposure is different. A tour operator that sells a flight as part of a package remains responsible under the package travel rules for the performance of the whole package, and cannot simply refer the traveller to the airline. A ticket seller that fails to pass on a schedule change notified by the carrier can find itself accounting for the compensation the passenger would otherwise have lost. Contracts between operators, agents and carriers should therefore allocate the notification duty expressly, because the passenger will pursue whoever is easiest to reach.
The 2026 revision and what applies until it takes effect
The Regulation has been under revision since 2013, and the process is now close to its end. The Conciliation Committee of the European Parliament and the Council approved a joint text on 15 June 2026 amending both Regulation 261/2004 and Regulation 2027/97. The text still has to undergo legal-linguistic revision and to be formally adopted by both institutions and published in the Official Journal before it can enter into force, and no date of application should be assumed until that has happened.
On the points that matter most to passengers, the agreed text writes the three-hour arrival delay threshold into the Regulation itself rather than leaving it to the case law, and it keeps the compensation amounts of 250, 400 and 600 euro. Until the amending regulation applies, Regulation 261/2004 in its present form, as interpreted by the Court of Justice, continues to govern every claim, including claims for flights taken today.
What to do if your flight is disrupted
Establish at the airport which of the three events has occurred, because delay, cancellation and denied boarding lead to different claims. Ask for the reason in writing and record the times, in particular the moment the aircraft doors open on arrival. Insist on care once the waiting threshold is reached, and if it is not provided, buy what is reasonable and keep the receipts. Choose deliberately between a refund and re-routing rather than accepting whatever the carrier books for you.
Afterwards, claim in writing from the operating carrier, quantify the amount by distance band, and do not accept a voucher in place of money unless you genuinely prefer it, because acceptance may be treated as settlement. If the carrier refuses, ask it to identify the extraordinary circumstance and the measures it took, complain to the Inspectorate, and do not let the limitation period run out while you wait for an answer.
Frequently asked questions
What is EU Regulation 261/2004?
EU Regulation 261/2004 is a European law that protects air passengers when flights go wrong. It guarantees rights to compensation and assistance when airlines cancel flights at short notice, delay passengers by three hours or more, or deny boarding to passengers with a valid ticket.
How much compensation can I claim under Regulation 261/2004?
Compensation ranges from €250 to €600 per passenger, depending on the flight distance. Shorter flights attract lower amounts and longer flights the maximum, provided the disruption meets the regulation’s conditions.
When does EU Regulation 261/2004 apply?
It generally applies to flights departing from an EU airport, and to flights into the EU operated by an EU airline. The disruption must involve a qualifying cancellation, a delay of three hours or more on arrival, or denied boarding.
What are extraordinary circumstances?
Extraordinary circumstances are events outside the airline’s control, such as severe weather or air traffic control strikes, that can exempt the airline from paying compensation. The airline must prove such circumstances applied to your flight.
What can I do if an airline refuses to pay compensation?
If an airline refuses a valid claim, you can escalate the matter and pursue your rights through legal action in the Netherlands. A lawyer can assess your claim, handle correspondence, and enforce payment where the airline owes compensation.
Law & More assists passengers and businesses with claims under EU Regulation 261/2004, from the first letter to the operating carrier through to proceedings before the Dutch courts, and advises airlines and travel businesses on their obligations under the Regulation. If a carrier has refused your claim or has not replied, our lawyers can assess the file and take the matter forward.
