Your Rights When a Flight Is Delayed or Cancelled

A delayed or cancelled flight is frustrating, but you often have more leverage than you think. What you’re actually owed depends on three things: where you’re flying, what caused the disruption, and whether the airline cancelled or just delayed. Here’s how it breaks down.

In the United States: refunds, yes — compensation, no

The US has no law requiring airlines to pay cash compensation for a delay. What it does require, as of the US Department of Transportation’s 2024 rule, is a prompt, automatic refund to your original form of payment whenever the airline cancels or significantly changes your flight and you don’t accept the alternative offered.

A “significant change” includes things like:

• A departure or arrival time that moves by 3+ hours (domestic) or 6+ hours (international);
• A change of departure or arrival airport;
• An added connection, or a downgrade to a lower cabin.

You’re entitled to a refund of the unused portion of your ticket — not a voucher — and the airline must issue it automatically once you decline rebooking. The same rule covers refunds for significantly delayed bags and for extras you paid for but didn’t get (Wi-Fi, seat selection). See the DOT refund rules.

For meals or a hotel during a long delay, the US relies on each airline’s own commitments rather than law. The DOT publishes what every large carrier has promised for delays and cancellations within their control on its Airline Customer Service Dashboard — worth a glance before you book.

In Europe and the UK: cash compensation on top

EU261 (and its post-Brexit twin, UK261) goes further. It applies to any flight departing an EU/UK airport, and to flights into the EU/UK on an EU/UK airline. When the airline is at fault, you may be owed cash compensation — separate from any refund — for a cancellation or an arrival delay of 3 or more hours:

• Short flights (under 1,500 km): €250 (about £220);
• Medium (1,500–3,500 km): €400 (about £350);
• Long (over 3,500 km): €600 (about £520).

The big exception is “extraordinary circumstances” — weather, air-traffic-control strikes, security, political instability. Those suspend the cash compensation (the airline didn’t cause them), but you keep your right to care (meals, communication, and a hotel if you’re stranded overnight) and to a refund or re-routing. Details: the EU’s air passenger rights page and the UK CAA.

Refund, rebooking, care, compensation — four different things

Most confusion about passenger rights comes from collapsing four distinct entitlements into one idea of “what the airline owes me.” They have different triggers, and you can be entitled to some and not others on the same disrupted flight.

A refund is your money back for travel you didn’t take. In the US it’s owed whenever the airline cancels or significantly changes your flight and you decline what’s offered — regardless of why. Weather does not excuse a refund.

Rebooking is transport to where you were going. On a single ticket this is the airline’s obligation, and it is usually what you actually want, since a refund on a bad day leaves you holding cash and no way home.

Care means meals, communication, and a hotel when you’re stranded overnight. In the EU and UK this survives even “extraordinary circumstances” — weather suspends the cash compensation but not the duty of care, which is the most commonly missed point on this whole page. In the US, care is governed by each airline’s published commitments rather than law.

Compensation is a cash penalty for the disruption itself, over and above getting you home. This is the one that hinges entirely on cause and region.

Why the cause decides so much

The dividing line running through nearly every rule is whether the disruption was within the airline’s control. Mechanical problems, crew scheduling failures, and IT outages generally are. Weather, air traffic control restrictions, security incidents, and strikes by third parties generally are not.

That distinction determines whether you see cash. It’s also why two passengers on the same cancelled flight can be owed different things: the reason recorded by the airline is the pivot, and it’s worth noting what you’re told at the time. Where a delay cascades — a morning weather event that leaves an aircraft out of position for an evening flight — the classification can be genuinely contested, and it is one of the more common grounds on which an initially denied claim later succeeds.

How to actually claim it

1. Keep everything: boarding passes, booking reference, and receipts for any meals or hotel.
2. Note the reason and the times — what the airline said caused it, and your actual arrival time. Compensation usually turns on arrival delay, not departure delay.
3. For a cancellation, explicitly request a refund — airlines often push a voucher first.
4. For EU261/UK261, file a written compensation claim with the airline, citing the regulation and your delay length.
5. Claim care separately if you paid for a hotel or meals — it survives the weather exception.
6. If the airline denies a valid claim, escalate — a DOT complaint in the US, or the national enforcement body / UK CAA in Europe.

Two practical notes. First, a first denial is not the end — claims are sometimes rejected on a cause that doesn’t hold up, and escalating to the national enforcement body costs you nothing. Second, you do not need a claims agency to file: they take a share of an award you can pursue yourself with a short written claim. They’re worth considering only if you’d otherwise not file at all.

Rules change and thresholds vary by situation — treat this as a starting point, not legal advice, and confirm specifics with the official sources linked above.