Flight delay and compensation

Flight delay or cancellation: your rights as a passenger

If your flight to or from Spain is delayed or cancelled, you are often entitled to compensation and to care while you wait. This is set out in European Regulation 261/2004. It covers all flights departing from an airport in the EU, whatever the airline, and flights into the EU on a European carrier. A flight between the Netherlands or Belgium and Alicante or Valencia is therefore covered in both directions.

When are you entitled to compensation?

• Delay: you arrive at your final destination three hours or more later than scheduled. What counts is the arrival time, not the departure time.
• Cancellation: you are told less than 14 days before departure. If the airline offers a replacement flight that leaves not much earlier and arrives not much later, the entitlement may fall away.
• Denied boarding: you are turned away because the flight is overbooked.
• Missed connection: you arrive three hours or more late at your final destination because you miss a connection, provided both flights were on one booking.

How much is the compensation?

The amount depends on the flight distance, not on the ticket price.

For travellers heading to the Costa Blanca, the 1,500-kilometre threshold cuts straight through the usual routes:

If, after a cancellation, you are given a replacement flight with only a limited delay, the compensation may be halved.

The right to care while you wait

Separately from the compensation, the airline has to look after you while you wait. On flights up to 1,500 kilometres that starts at two hours’ delay; on flights within the EU of more than 1,500 kilometres, at three hours. You are then entitled to:

• food and drink, in reasonable proportion to the waiting time;
• a hotel night if you cannot leave until the next day, plus transport between airport and hotel;
• two telephone calls or emails.

If the airline offers nothing and you pay yourself, keep every receipt: reasonable costs can be reclaimed afterwards. With a delay of five hours or more you may also abandon the trip and get your ticket refunded.

Extraordinary circumstances

The airline does not have to pay compensation if the delay or cancellation results from extraordinary circumstances that could not have been avoided even with all reasonable measures. Think of severe weather, an unannounced air traffic control strike or a terrorist threat. The airline has to prove this itself. A technical fault with the aircraft does not, as a rule, count as an extraordinary circumstance. Your right to care applies in every case.

How to submit a claim

• Keep your boarding pass, booking confirmation and receipts, and note the actual arrival time.
• Submit your claim in writing to the airline, through its web form or by email.
• If you get no answer, or an inadequate one, you can turn to the national enforcement body or to the European Consumer Centre in your own country.
• Claims agencies can take the handling off your hands, but they keep part of the compensation.

How long you have to claim depends on the national law of the country where you submit it. So do not leave it too long.

There is more about flights to the Costa Blanca on flying to Moraira. If the delay means you arrive late, a pre-booked transfer to Moraira that tracks your flight is a reassurance.

Where to turn if the airline does not pay

If the airline does not pay, or does not respond, which body you approach depends on the country you departed from. If you left from Spain that is AESA; if you flew from the Netherlands it is the ILT. Both are free of charge.

What you get on the flights out here

The amount of compensation depends on the distance as the crow flies. For the two airports where our guests usually land, it works out just differently.