Airlines won't pay you automatically - you have to claim. Here's the full process for 2026: what evidence to gather, how to submit, and how to escalate when they say no.
Your flight landed four hours late. The connection's gone, the hotel night is wasted, and the airline's only offer was a meal voucher and a shrug. Here's what most passengers never find out: that delay may legally be worth up to €600 in cash, and the airline is required to pay it. The catch is that nobody pays you automatically. You have to claim, and airlines have made the claiming process just awkward enough that most people give up.
At Gyro, we handle that entire process for you - from checking your eligibility to collecting the money - and you keep 100% of whatever the airline pays. This guide walks you through exactly how a flight compensation claim works in 2026, step by step, whether you do it yourself or let us do it for you.
Am I eligible to claim flight compensation?
Before you write a single email, confirm your disruption actually qualifies. Under EU Regulation EC 261/2004, you can claim if your flight departed from an EU airport (any airline) or arrived in the EU on an EU carrier, and you reached your final destination 3 or more hours late. Cancellations with less than 14 days' notice and denied boarding due to overbooking qualify too. The UK mirrors these rules under UK261, enforced by the UK Civil Aviation Authority.
One condition trips people up: the cause matters. Airlines don't owe compensation for extraordinary circumstances - genuine events outside their control like severe weather, air traffic control strikes, or security alerts. Technical faults and crew shortages, on the other hand, almost never count. If you're not sure where your disruption falls, our guide on how to know if your delayed flight qualifies breaks down eligibility in detail.
From the claims we handle at Gyro, the single most common mistake at this stage is self-disqualification. Passengers hear "bad weather" in a gate announcement and assume they have no case. Often the weather affected an earlier rotation, not their flight - and that distinction, confirmed by the CJEU, frequently turns a "no" into a paid claim.
How much flight compensation can I claim?
Compensation under EC 261 and UK261 is fixed by flight distance, not ticket price. A €39 budget fare can pay out €250. Here's the full breakdown:
| Flight distance |
EC 261 compensation |
UK261 compensation |
| Up to 1,500 km |
€250 |
£220 |
| 1,500 to 3,500 km |
€400 |
£350 |
| Over 3,500 km |
€600 |
£520 |
Two footnotes worth knowing. Intra-EU flights over 1,500 km pay €400, never €600. And on long-haul routes, airlines can halve the payout to €300 (£260) if rerouting got you there less than 4 hours late. The clock always runs on arrival time at your final destination - door opening, to be precise - not departure.
On top of compensation, you're owed care during the wait: meals, refreshments, and a hotel if the delay runs overnight. Keep those receipts. We routinely add care expenses to claims at Gyro, and they often push the total recovery well past the headline compensation figure - one stranded family we represented recovered more in hotel and meal costs than in the EC 261 payout itself.
What evidence do I need to claim flight compensation?
A strong claim is built before you leave the airport. Gather these:
- Your booking confirmation and boarding pass (digital copies are fine)
- The flight number, scheduled times, and actual arrival time
- Any airline communication about the disruption - emails, SMS, app notifications
- Photos of departure boards showing the delay or cancellation
- Receipts for meals, transport, and accommodation
- The reason the airline gave for the disruption, in writing if possible
Don't panic if you've thrown half of this away. Flight data is publicly recorded, and airlines hold your booking records for years. The booking reference and your name are usually enough to reconstruct the rest.
This is exactly why we built Autopilot at Gyro: it scans your inbox for flight confirmations going back 3 years and flags every disrupted flight you can still claim for. Most users discover at least one compensable flight they'd completely forgotten about.
How do I submit a claim directly to the airline?
You always claim from the operating carrier - the airline that actually flew the route - even if you booked through a travel agent or a codeshare partner. The process looks like this:
- Find the airline's compensation claim form. Most carriers bury it under "Customer Relations" or "Feedback" rather than anywhere obvious.
- State your legal basis plainly: compensation under Article 7 of EC 261/2004 (or UK261 for UK flights).
- Include your flight details, booking reference, the delay length at arrival, and your evidence.
- Name your figure and set a deadline - 14 days is reasonable - for a substantive response.
- Ask for payment by bank transfer. You're never obliged to accept vouchers, and vouchers are almost always worth less than cash.
Then comes the part airlines rely on: silence. Some respond in days. Others take months, send template rejections, or offer a voucher worth half your legal entitlement and hope you'll take it.
Our field data at Gyro shows the first response is rarely the final answer. A meaningful share of claims that airlines initially reject get paid in full once we push back with the flight's operational data and the relevant case law. Treat a first rejection as an opening position, not a verdict.
What happens if the airline rejects or ignores my claim?
You have three escalation routes, and they work in roughly this order:
National enforcement bodies (NEBs). Every EU country designates a regulator to enforce EC 261; in the UK it's the CAA, and in the US the Department of Transportation handles refund complaints. You complain to the NEB of the country where the disruption happened. It costs nothing, though NEBs issue opinions rather than binding payment orders in most countries. Our overview of the regulatory bodies behind passenger rights explains who enforces what.
Alternative dispute resolution (ADR). Many airlines are signed up to approved ADR schemes. Decisions are typically binding on the airline but not on you, which makes ADR a low-risk middle step.
Court. Small claims procedures across Europe and the European Small Claims Procedure for cross-border cases are designed for exactly this. Filing fees are modest, and airlines frequently settle once papers are served rather than send a lawyer to defend a €400 claim.
At Gyro we escalate as far as it takes, including legal action, at no cost to you - and in our experience the mere arrival of a properly framed legal letter resolves a large share of "final rejections" within weeks.
How long do I have to claim flight compensation?
EC 261 sets no deadline of its own, so each country's national limitation period applies. The differences are dramatic:
| Country |
Time limit to claim |
| United Kingdom |
6 years (5 in Scotland) |
| France / Spain |
5 years |
| Germany |
3 years |
| Italy |
26 months |
| Netherlands |
2 years |
The limit generally follows the courts that would hear your case - usually the country of departure or the airline's home jurisdiction. The practical takeaway: that nightmare delay from 2022 may still be money in the bank.
We see this constantly at Gyro. Roughly a third of the claims Autopilot surfaces are more than a year old, and passengers are routinely stunned that a flight they'd written off years ago still pays out in full.
Should I claim flight compensation myself or use a claims service?
You can absolutely claim on your own, and for a cooperative airline with a clear-cut delay, it can work fine. The honest trade-offs:
Claiming yourself costs nothing but time. You'll handle the correspondence, the legal references, the follow-ups, and any escalation. If the airline plays fair, that might be one email. If it doesn't, you're looking at months of back-and-forth or a court filing.
Traditional claims companies remove the hassle but take 25% to 50% of your payout as commission. On a €600 claim, that's up to €300 gone.
Gyro works differently. We run the whole process - eligibility check, claim, escalation, legal action if needed - and you keep 100% of what the airline pays. There's no commission and no fee if the claim fails. We're paid separately, which means the compensation the law assigns to you actually reaches you.
One pattern from our claims desk worth sharing: persistence is the real differentiator. Airlines reject weak-looking claims by default because most passengers never follow up. The claims that get paid are the ones that don't go away.
Final thoughts: the money is yours - go and get it
Flight compensation isn't a goodwill gesture or a loyalty perk. It's a legal debt the airline owes you the moment a qualifying disruption happens, backed by two decades of regulation and court rulings across Europe, the UK and beyond. The system has one design flaw: it only works if you claim. Airlines know that fewer than a quarter of eligible passengers ever do, and their processes - buried forms, slow replies, lowball vouchers - are built around that statistic. The playbook to beat them is simple. Confirm eligibility, gather your evidence, submit a claim that cites the law, refuse the voucher, and escalate without hesitation when they stall. Or skip all of it and let us run the playbook for you. Either way, don't let the airline keep money that's legally yours - and remember those limitation periods run for years, so your past flights count too.
Find out what your disrupted flight was worth
If your flight was delayed 3+ hours, cancelled at short notice, or overbooked, you may be owed €250 to €600 under EC 261 - plus care expenses on top. Gyro checks your eligibility for free. You keep 100% of whatever the airline pays.
- Free eligibility check in 60 seconds
- Autopilot scans 3 years of your inbox for forgotten claimable flights
- You keep 100% of the compensation - no percentage cut
Check what you're owed
