UK261 — What Changed After Brexit

UK261 is EU261 preserved in UK domestic law after Brexit, with compensation converted to £220/£350/£520. The substance is nearly identical; what changed is scope — "departing a Member State" became "departing the UK," which quietly split some routes that used to be covered by one regulation into being covered by two, or by neither.

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

When the UK left the EU, EU261 didn’t simply stop applying to British flights — it was carried over into UK law wholesale under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018’s “retained EU law” mechanism. The result, informally called UK261, is regulated by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) rather than an EU body, but it reads almost identically to the regulation it came from.

What’s the same

Everything about how a claim is assessed:

• The same three triggers: cancellation, denied boarding, and (via the same Sturgeon-derived case law) a delay of 3+ hours.
• The same distance bands, just in pounds: £220, £350, £520 instead of €250, €400, €600.
• The same extraordinary-circumstances defence, with the same case law behind it — a UK court asking whether a technical fault excuses an airline reasons through Wallentin-Hermann exactly as an EU court would, since UK261 retained the underlying legal test, not just the numbers.
• The same 50% reduction mechanic for a short delay on a long-haul flight.

What changed: who’s covered

EU261 applies to a flight departing any EU/EEA/Swiss airport, on any airline. Before Brexit, that included the UK. After Brexit, the UK is a third country like any other for EU261’s purposes — so EU261 no longer covers a flight departing London, no matter who operates it.

UK261 fills that gap with its own mirror rule: a flight departing a UK airport is covered by UK261, on any airline. But the two regulations are no longer the same regulation wearing two names — they apply independently, based on where each flight actually departs from, which produces routes that are covered by one, both, or (rarely) neither:

Route	EU261?	UK261?
London → New York, any airline	No	Yes (UK departure)
Paris → New York, any airline	Yes (EU departure)	No
London → Paris, British Airways	No (UK departure, non-EU carrier)	Yes (UK departure)
London → Paris, Air France	Yes (EU carrier arriving in the EU)	Yes (UK departure)
New York → London, American Airlines	No	No — US carrier, neither departure counts

That last row surprises people: a US airline flying you from New York to London isn’t covered by either regulation, because the flight didn’t depart the UK or EU, and American Airlines isn’t licensed in either. The same trip on British Airways or Air France would be covered — the airline’s home country, not just the airports, decides it once departure is outside both zones.

Why this still matters years after Brexit

The compensation amounts track each other closely enough (£220 ≈ €250 at typical exchange rates) that most passengers never notice a practical difference. Where it actually matters is exactly the edge cases in the table above — a UK-departing flight on a foreign airline, or a US-departing flight into Europe — where knowing which regulation (if either) applies changes the answer from “you’re covered” to “you’re not,” not just which currency the payout arrives in.

Run your own route through the flight delay compensation calculator to see which of the two — or both — apply to it.