Cardiff flight delay and cancellation compensation

Cardiff flight delay and cancellation: your rights

Cardiff is Wales's national airport, running a compact schedule of holiday routes and a small number of scheduled European services.

Land three or more hours late at your final destination and the airline owes you a fixed sum. Distance sets it, not the ticket price.

Which rules apply at Cardiff

Every flight out of Cardiff is a UK departure, so UK261 covers it whatever the airline's nationality. A Spanish or Irish airline taking off here counts just as a British one does.

UK261 reaches a flight into Cardiff only when a UK, EU or EEA airline flies it. For this airport's traffic that is nearly always the case.

Distance fixes the sum, never the fare:

• £220 on routes up to 1,500 km
• £350 between 1,500 and 3,500 km
• £520 beyond 3,500 km

Note the split on a European route. The outbound from here is a UK261 flight, paid in pounds. The flight home is an EU261 departure, paid in euros.

Is a short European flight worth claiming on?

Yes. The figure is the same whatever you paid, and on the routes this airport flies it is usually well above the fare.

The airline owes it per passenger too. A family of four on a delayed holiday flight collects £880 between them at the lowest band.

What goes wrong at Cardiff

Low-cost flying runs on tight turnarounds, so a delay early in an aircraft's day often lasts to its last rotation. A late inbound aircraft is the most familiar cause of a late departure.

Wind, low cloud and winter de-icing all feature, and European flow limits on busy weekends do the rest. Weather can be an extraordinary circumstance, but the airline has to prove it for your flight.

Technical faults, crews running out of hours and commercial cancellations of thin flights are the airline's own doing, so the money still stands.

How to claim Cardiff flight delay compensation

Start with the flight itself. Our free flight check reads the recorded departure and arrival times for your flight from Cardiff and tells you which band it falls in.

Your Cardiff compensation claim turns on two things: the arrival time, and the reason the airline gives.

For a late arrival, read the flight delay compensation guide. For a flight that never flew, read the cancellation compensation guide. It covers Cardiff cancellation compensation too. Has the airline said no? The case law summary sets out what the courts make of the usual excuses.