EU261, Explained

EU261 (Regulation (EC) No 261/2004) entitles passengers to fixed compensation — €250 to €600 — for a cancelled flight, an involuntary denied boarding, or (per later CJEU case law) a delay of 3+ hours at arrival, on any flight departing an EU/EEA/Swiss airport or arriving there on an EU-licensed carrier — unless the airline proves the cause was a genuinely extraordinary circumstance.

What does this mean for you? Work out your own number: Flight delay compensation calculator

EU261 is the common name for Regulation (EC) No 261/2004, the EU law on compensation and assistance for airline passengers. It’s one of the most litigated pieces of EU consumer legislation, largely because the version enforced today is significantly bigger than the version actually voted into law.

What the text itself says

Three situations, three articles:

• Article 4 — Denied boarding. If you’re bumped from an oversold flight against your will, the airline “shall immediately compensate” you per Article 7. No excuse is written into this article at all.
• Article 5 — Cancellation. Compensation is due unless the airline gave enough advance notice (14+ days, or less with a tight enough replacement flight) or proves “extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken.”
• Article 7 — The amounts. €250 for flights of 1,500km or less, €400 up to 3,500km, €600 beyond that, measured by the great-circle distance between the airports.

Notice what’s missing: a flight that’s simply delayed, but not cancelled, gets no mention at all in the operative articles. The regulation’s Article 6 only requires the airline to provide meals, hotel and communication for a long delay — not money.

What the courts added

In 2009, the Court of Justice of the EU decided Sturgeon v Condor (C-402/07) and a companion case together. The reasoning: a passenger who arrives 3+ hours late has lost essentially the same time as one whose flight was cancelled and rebooked, so denying the delayed passenger compensation while paying the cancelled one would treat comparable situations unequally — a breach of the general EU principle of equal treatment. The Court reinterpreted Articles 5-7 to apply “mutatis mutandis” to long delay.

This is why “the EU261 3-hour rule” is common knowledge despite not appearing anywhere in the regulation’s own text — it’s the practical effect of that single, still-controversial judgment (airlines challenged it repeatedly; the CJEU reaffirmed it in Nelson v Lufthansa, C-581/10, in 2012).

The extraordinary-circumstances fight

Nearly every disputed EU261 claim comes down to one question: was the cause “extraordinary”? The regulation gives examples in its recitals — political instability, unsafe weather, security risks, strikes — but the real boundaries were drawn case by case:

• Technical faults are (mostly) not extraordinary. Wallentin-Hermann v Alitalia (C-549/07, 2008) held that fixing a technical problem is inherent in running an airline, with a narrow exception for a hidden defect affecting a whole aircraft type.
• The airline’s own staff striking is not extraordinary, even a wildcat strike its management didn’t organise (Airhelp v SAS, C-28/20, 2021) — a third party’s strike (air traffic control, airport staff) generally is.
• The burden of proof sits with the airline, not the passenger. An airline that simply asserts “technical issue” without evidence hasn’t discharged that burden.

See the calculator for how a specific reason plays out, and what UK261 changed after Brexit for how the UK version differs.