easyJet flight delay and cancellation compensation

Which rules cover your easyJet flight

easyJet began as a British short-haul carrier based at London Luton and still operates a large UK fleet. It also holds an Austrian operating licence through easyJet Europe, registered in Vienna, and a Swiss licence through easyJet Switzerland in Geneva and Basel. The airline you booked with is the brand; the entity that actually operates your flight is shown on your confirmation and on the aircraft registration.

That structure sounds like a complication and rarely is, because coverage lands the same way most of the time:

• Any departure from an EU/EEA airport is covered by EU261 regardless of which easyJet entity flies it.
• Any departure from a UK airport is covered by UK261.
• Arrivals into the EU/EEA from a non-EU country are covered when the operating carrier is an EU airline — which easyJet Europe is.
• Arrivals into the UK are covered by UK261 when flown by a UK or EU carrier.

You do not need to work this out yourself. A free check settles it from the flight number and date.

What triggers a payment

Three situations produce fixed compensation, and none of them depend on what you paid:

• Arriving at your final destination three hours or more late
• A cancellation with less than 14 days' notice, unless the replacement flight lands close to your original schedule
• Denied boarding because the flight was oversold, provided you presented yourself on time

A delay of five hours or more also gives you the right to abandon the trip entirely and take a full refund, separately from any compensation.

How much compensation you could receive

• EUR 250 for routes of 1,500 km or less — Gatwick to Amsterdam, Milan to Naples
• EUR 400 for intra-EU routes over 1,500 km and other routes up to 3,500 km — most of easyJet's Greek, Spanish and Turkish flying
• EUR 600 for the small number of routes beyond 3,500 km

UK261 pays GBP 220, GBP 350 or GBP 520 on the same distance bands. Where a long-haul delay is between three and four hours, Article 7(2) allows the airline to halve the top figure.

When easyJet does not have to pay

Compensation falls away if the cause was an extraordinary circumstance outside easyJet's control and unavoidable even with all reasonable measures. Storms, fog, lightning strikes on the airframe, ATC flow restrictions, runway closures and security incidents are the usual examples, and Gatwick and Amsterdam in particular are prone to slot and capacity constraints.

The burden of proof sits with the airline, not with you. It must show both the cause and that it did what it reasonably could — including looking at whether an earlier aircraft swap or a seat on another carrier would have got you there sooner. A knock-on delay from an earlier rotation is not automatically extraordinary just because the first disruption was.

Claiming, and what happens next

Gather the booking reference, boarding passes, the cancellation or delay notification, and receipts for any meals, calls or hotel nights you paid for yourself. Those expenses are recoverable under the separate right to care and sit alongside compensation rather than replacing it.

Airlines commonly acknowledge a claim quickly and take considerably longer to decide it, and response times lengthen during disruption peaks. If a claim is refused with a thin explanation, the next steps are the UK Civil Aviation Authority's alternative dispute resolution route for UK flights, the relevant national enforcement body in the EU, or court.

We run the whole process, and the eligibility check costs nothing. Our fee is a flat EUR 39, payable only if money is recovered; the airline's compensation is yours.