Your flight just got cancelled and the airline is pushing a voucher. Before you accept anything, know this: you have enforceable rights to a cash refund, a re-routed flight, food, a hotel and possibly hundreds in compensation. Here's your complete 2026 action plan.
The board flips to "Cancelled" and the whole terminal seems to inhale at once. Suddenly you're in a queue that isn't moving, an agent is offering you a voucher, and nobody will tell you straight whether you're getting home tonight or your money back at all. It's stressful, it's deliberate, and it's costing passengers a fortune every single year.
Here's what airlines would rather you didn't know. A cancelled flight isn't bad luck you simply absorb. You have enforceable rights - to a full cash refund, to a seat on another flight, to meals and a hotel while you wait, and often to hundreds of euros in compensation on top. At Gyro, we handle the entire claim for you, from checking eligibility to collecting the payment, on a no-win, no-fee basis. This guide walks you through exactly what to do, in the order that protects both your trip and your wallet.
What should I do the moment my flight is cancelled?
Move fast, but move smart. The first thing to do is get to a human - join the airline's rebooking queue and, at the same time, call the airline's phone line. Whichever gets to you first wins, and phone lines often move quicker than a heaving airport desk.
While you wait, protect your claim. Photograph the departure board showing the cancellation. Screenshot any cancellation text or email, because that timestamp decides how much notice you were given, which in turn decides your compensation.
Then ask the agent one specific question and get the answer in writing: why was the flight cancelled? A note on a card, an email, anything. That single reason is the most valuable piece of evidence you can hold, and airlines get vague precisely because they know it.
Finally, keep every receipt from that point on. Coffee, dinner, a taxi, a hotel - if you end up paying out of pocket, those receipts turn into reimbursements later. In our experience handling claims, the passengers who lose out are almost never the ones without rights. They're the ones who binned the receipts and accepted a voucher at the desk before anyone had checked what they were actually owed.
Should I accept the refund or the re-routing?
This is your call, not the airline's. Under EU Regulation EC 261/2004, a cancellation gives you a clear choice between two things: a full refund of your ticket, or re-routing to your final destination at the earliest opportunity (or a later date that suits you).
Pick the refund when the trip no longer makes sense - the meeting's over, the wedding's passed, or you'd rather book something better yourself. A refund means the full cash value of the unused ticket back to your original payment method, not a credit note. If you want the detail on forcing a cash payout when an airline keeps steering you toward getting your money back as a voucher instead of cash, we've broken that down separately.
Pick the re-routing when you still need to get there. Crucially, the airline has to get you to your destination even if that means putting you on a rival carrier, and they foot the bill. You don't pay the fare difference.
One warning we see catch people out constantly: don't book a brand-new ticket yourself in a panic before asking the airline to re-route you. If you self-rebook, you may forfeit the right to have them cover it. Ask them to fulfil their re-routing duty first, and only go your own way if they can't or won't offer something reasonable.
Am I owed compensation for a cancelled flight?
Possibly a lot, and this is the part most travellers miss entirely. Compensation is separate from your refund, and it hinges on one thing above all: how much notice the airline gave you. The magic number is 14 days.
If the airline told you less than 14 days before departure, cash compensation is on the table. If they gave you two weeks or more, it usually isn't. Between those poles, it depends on how good the alternative flight they offered was. Here's the rule in plain terms.
| Notice you were given |
Re-routing offered |
Compensation due? |
| 14 days or more before departure |
Any |
No |
| 7 to 13 days before |
Alternative departing up to 2 hrs early and arriving under 4 hrs late |
No |
| 7 to 13 days before |
No adequate alternative |
Yes |
| Less than 7 days before |
Alternative departing up to 1 hr early and arriving under 2 hrs late |
No |
| Less than 7 days before |
No adequate alternative |
Yes |
When compensation is due, the amount depends on how far you were flying, not what you paid. A €40 budget fare and a €400 flexible ticket on the same route are worth exactly the same in compensation.
| Flight distance |
Example route |
Compensation per passenger |
| Up to 1,500 km |
Dublin to Paris |
€250 |
| 1,500 to 3,500 km |
Madrid to Berlin |
€400 |
| Over 3,500 km |
London to New York |
€600 |
On very long-haul cancellations, one nuance applies. If the airline gets you re-routed and you land within a few hours of your original time, they can halve the long-haul figure to €300. It still counts, and it's still worth claiming.
Here's the pattern we see again and again: passengers assume that because they eventually reached their destination, they can't claim. Not true. If the cancellation came late and the replacement got you there hours behind schedule, the compensation is very often still owed.
What is the airline required to pay for while I'm stranded?
Quite a bit, and this duty kicks in whether or not you're owed compensation. It's called your right to care, and it exists precisely so a cancellation doesn't leave you sleeping on a terminal floor at your own expense.
Once you're waiting, the airline must provide meals and refreshments in proportion to the delay. If the disruption rolls into the night, they must arrange hotel accommodation and the transport to get you there and back. They should also cover a couple of phone calls or emails.
If the airline drops the ball and you sort out your own sandwich, taxi and Travelodge, keep the receipts. Reasonable out-of-pocket costs are reclaimable, which is exactly why we told you to hoard them earlier.
A hard-won tip from the claims we process: airlines lean on the word "reasonable" to knock back a £300-a-night suite or a lavish airport dinner. Keep your spending sensible and proportionate, and you'll rarely see a care-expense reimbursement refused.
Did you know?
If your flight is cancelled with less than 14 days' notice, you can be owed up to €600 in cash compensation on top of a full refund. The two are separate rights, and airlines rarely mention you can claim both.
What are my rights if my flight is cancelled in the US?
Different system, different logic. US rules are refund-focused rather than compensation-focused, so the numbers work out very differently from Europe.
Under the Department of Transportation's automatic refund rule, if your flight is cancelled and you decline the airline's rebooking, you're entitled to an automatic cash refund - no forms, no phone marathon. That covers the full fare including taxes and fees, and it applies even to non-refundable tickets and regardless of why the flight was cancelled. Refunds must land within seven business days for card payments and 20 calendar days for other methods.
What the US doesn't have is EU-style fixed cash compensation. There's no automatic $600 for the inconvenience. Meals and hotels aren't guaranteed by law either. They depend on each airline's own published commitments, which you can compare on the DOT's flightrights dashboard. The contrast across regions is stark.
| Region |
Cash compensation |
Refund right |
Meals and hotel |
| EU (EC 261) |
€250 to €600 |
Full refund within 7 days |
Required by law |
| UK (UK261) |
£220 to £520 |
Full refund within 7 days |
Required by law |
| US (DOT) |
None fixed |
Automatic full refund |
Airline commitments only |
The takeaway from the transatlantic claims we handle is worth flagging. A New York to Rome flight on a European carrier can fall under EU rules even though it left the US, which means a passenger who assumed they'd get "just a refund" is sometimes owed €600 as well. Route and operating airline decide it, so it's always worth a check.
When can an airline refuse to pay, and how do I push back?
There's one legitimate escape hatch, and airlines use it liberally. It's called extraordinary circumstances - events genuinely outside the airline's control, like severe weather, air traffic control strikes or a security threat. When one of those truly causes the cancellation, compensation isn't owed (though your refund and care rights survive).
The catch is that airlines stretch the definition well past breaking point. A crew shortage, a routine technical fault, a knock-on delay from an earlier flight - these are usually the airline's own problem, not an act of God, yet they get labelled "extraordinary" all the time. We dig into where the line actually sits, and how courts have ruled on the situations where airlines can legitimately refuse to pay, in our EC 261 explainer.
So what do you do when they say no? First, don't take the initial rejection as final. A large share of the claims we ultimately win were rejected by the airline at the first pass, often over the phone with no proper assessment. Put it in writing, cite the regulation, and reference the actual cause if you have it documented.
If the airline still won't budge, you can escalate to a regulator. Knowing which enforcement body handles your route - the CAA, the DOT or a national body - makes all the difference to whether your complaint lands. Or you hand the whole thing to us and skip the fight entirely. We know exactly which "extraordinary" claims hold up and which don't, and we only get paid when you do.
The bottom line on a cancelled flight
A cancellation feels like a dead end, but legally it's the opposite. It's the moment a stack of rights switches on at once: your choice of a full refund or a re-routed flight, meals and a hotel while you wait, and frequently hundreds in cash compensation stacked on top. The passengers who walk away with nothing usually did nothing wrong except accept the first voucher they were handed and assume that was that.
So do the opposite. Screenshot the cancellation, get the reason in writing, keep your receipts, and choose the refund or re-routing that actually suits you rather than the one that suits the airline. Then check what else you're owed, because a refund alone is often only half of it.
That's where we come in. Gyro checks your eligibility for free, handles the paperwork, argues the "extraordinary circumstances" fight for you, and collects the money from the airline. You keep 100% of what they pay. If you'd rather never miss a claim again, connect your inbox to Autopilot and we'll scan up to three years of past flights for compensation you didn't know you were sitting on.
Find out what your cancelled flight is really worth
If your flight was cancelled with less than 14 days' notice, you may be owed €250 to €600 under EC 261 or UK261 - and that's on top of a full refund of your ticket. Gyro checks your eligibility for free. You keep 100% of whatever the airline pays.
- Free eligibility check in 60 seconds
- You keep 100% of the compensation - no percentage cut
- Care expense reimbursements (meals, hotels) included in the claim
Check what you're owed
