Claiming for a disrupted flight

While you wait

Whatever the cause, once a delay passes the threshold for your flight's distance the airline has to look after you while you wait: food and drink in reasonable relation to the wait, two phone calls or emails, and a hotel and transfers if you are kept overnight. This applies even when no compensation is due. Ask at the airline's desk.

What decides it

• How late you land. Not how late you leave. Fixed compensation can arise from three hours late at the destination, and a flight that leaves three hours down may make some of it up in the air.
• Why it was disrupted. Airlines do not pay where the cause was outside their control and unavoidable — weather, air traffic control, a security alert, a strike by someone other than their own staff. A technical fault normally is not. It is for the airline to prove the cause.

Claim it yourself, for nothing

1. Keep the boarding pass and booking reference, and note the time you actually landed. That figure decides it, not the departure time.
2. Ask the airline why the flight was disrupted, at the desk or in writing. Their answer is what a claim turns on.
3. Claim on the airline’s own form. It is free, and no service can recover more than the airline owes.
4. If the airline refuses, or takes more than eight weeks, the Civil Aviation Authority lists the free dispute scheme each airline belongs to and handles complaints about the airlines that belong to none.

There is no hurry today. In England and Wales you have six years to bring a claim, so the thing to do at the airport is keep the evidence, not fill in a form.

Or use a claims service

A claims service writes the letters, chases the airline and takes it further if the airline refuses. It charges a share of anything it recovers, so the same claim pays you less than making it yourself would.

Claiming direct with the airline is free. Some airlines will only deal with a claims service once you have claimed directly yourself. Clear Beacon may be paid if you go on to use a claims service.