Most travelers assume a delayed or cancelled flight is just a bad day with no recourse beyond a meal voucher. In a lot of cases that's wrong — air passenger rights rules in the EU and UK (and comparable rules in some other regions) entitle you to fixed cash compensation for a long enough delay, a cancellation, or being denied boarding, on top of any rebooking or refund. The rules are genuinely generous on paper. The gap between "entitled to" and "actually paid" comes down to one exemption airlines lean on constantly, and a claims process most people never bother starting.
The basic thresholds
Under EU261 (the EU regulation most similar rules are modeled on), compensation applies to flights departing an EU airport on any airline, or arriving at an EU airport on an EU-based carrier. A delay of 3 hours or more at arrival, a cancellation with short notice, or denied boarding due to overbooking can trigger a fixed payout — commonly in the range of €250 to €600 depending on the flight distance, regardless of the ticket price you paid. Similar frameworks exist for UK flights post-Brexit and in some other countries, with different specific thresholds — check the rule set that applies to your specific route rather than assuming EU261 itself applies outside EU-connected flights.
"Extraordinary circumstances" is the exemption that does the most work
Airlines aren't required to pay if the delay was caused by "extraordinary circumstances" — genuinely unusual events like severe weather, air traffic control strikes, or security threats. The catch is that airlines have a financial incentive to classify as many delays as possible under this exemption, including some that courts and regulators have later ruled don't actually qualify (a routine mechanical fault, for instance, generally does NOT count as extraordinary — it's treated as a normal operational risk the airline should plan for). Don't accept an airline's own classification of "extraordinary circumstances" as final; it's the single most disputed part of every compensation claim.
Filing directly vs. using a claims service
You can file a compensation claim directly with the airline yourself at no cost — the regulation doesn't require using a third party. The tradeoff is time and effort: airlines are not motivated to make this process easy, initial claims get rejected at a high rate (correctly or not), and pursuing a wrongly denied claim can mean escalating to a national enforcement body or small claims court. Claims services handle the paperwork, the airline back-and-forth, and often the escalation, in exchange for a percentage of the payout (commonly in the 25-35% range, sometimes structured as "no win, no fee") — genuinely useful if you don't want to spend the time, at the cost of keeping less of the payout than filing yourself.
What to actually check before filing
- Whether your specific flight qualifies under EU261 or a comparable regional rule — departure/arrival airport and carrier both matter.
- The actual arrival delay, measured door-to-door (when the aircraft doors open), not the scheduled vs. actual departure time.
- Whether the airline's stated reason for the delay is genuinely "extraordinary" or a routine operational issue being labeled that way.
- Whether the time saved by using a claims service is worth the percentage it takes, versus filing directly yourself for free.
AirHelp is one of the services that handles this claims process on a no-win, no-fee basis, checking flight eligibility and managing the airline dispute. The eligibility rules and the "extraordinary circumstances" dispute described above apply the same way whether you file through a service or directly yourself.
The takeaway
Flight delay compensation rules are more generous than most travelers assume, and a genuinely long delay or cancellation is often worth checking rather than writing off as bad luck. Whether a specific claim actually gets paid comes down to whether the airline's "extraordinary circumstances" excuse holds up, and whether you have the time to pursue a claim yourself or would rather hand that over for a cut of the payout.