EU261 vs UK261 compensation, compared with Canada's APPR and Israel's law

EU261 vs UK261 compensation works almost identically: three hours late at the arrival gate, and you are owed €250 to €600, or £220 to £520 by distance. Canada pays by how late you landed rather than how far you flew. Israel's law waits until eight hours. Four regimes, four different flight delay compensation thresholds.

Most comparisons online stop at Europe and Britain. This page puts the other two regimes we claim under alongside them, so you can see at a glance which test your flight has to pass.

EU261 vs UK261 compensation, and where Canada and Israel part company

The European rules come from Regulation (EC) 261/2004 ("EU261"), which set common rules on compensation for denied boarding, cancellation and long delay and is still in force, as the text on EUR-Lex shows. Britain kept its own copy after Brexit, in pounds.

Regime	Delay that triggers money	Distance matters	Amount
EU261	3 hours late at arrival	Yes, three bands	€250 / €400 / €600
UK261	3 hours late at arrival	Yes, three bands	£220 / £350 / £520
Canada, Air Passenger Protection Regulations	Steps at 3, 6 and 9 hours late at arrival	No — length of delay and size of airline	Set in Canadian dollars by the APPR
Israel, Aviation Services Law	8 hours late	Yes, distance bands	Set in shekels, index-linked

The headline difference is what each regime measures. Europe and Israel price the journey you lost; Canada prices the hours you lost.

UK261 compensation amounts and the EU261 distance bands, in euros and pounds

Both European regimes sort flights into the same three distance bands. Only the currency and the rounded figures differ.

Flight distance	EU261	UK261
Up to 1,500 km	€250	£220
1,500–3,500 km, and all internal EU flights over 1,500 km	€400	£350
Over 3,500 km, outside the EU or UK	€600	£520

A Manchester to Málaga delay sits in the middle band; London to New York sits in the top one. On long-haul cancellations, the airline can halve the payment if the replacement flight gets you in close enough to the original time, as explained in our guide to cancelled-flight compensation.

The UK Civil Aviation Authority puts the principle plainly: as a consumer you have important legal rights when your flight is delayed or cancelled, says the CAA. Our own plain-language guides set out who EU261 covers and the extraordinary-circumstances defence and the retained UK version with the amounts in pounds.

Which regime covers a Toronto to Heathrow flight?

Coverage follows the airport you leave from and, sometimes, the airline's licence.

• EU261: any airline departing an EU or EEA airport, and EU airlines flying into the EU from anywhere.
• UK261: any airline departing a UK airport, and UK or EU airlines flying into the UK.
• Canada's APPR: flights to, from and within Canada.
• Israel's Aviation Services Law: flights departing Israel, with further protection on inbound flights.

So a Toronto to Heathrow flight can sit under two regimes at once. You do not get paid twice; you pick the one that pays better and is easier to enforce. On a UK carrier, that is usually UK261 — see how British Airways flights fall under both sets of rules.

Three hours, six hours, nine hours: Canada counts the delay

Canada APPR compensation rises in steps as the delay lengthens, with the first step at three hours late on arrival and further steps at six and nine hours. Distance is irrelevant. A short hop and a transatlantic sector pay the same for the same delay.

The other variable is the airline. The APPR sets one scale for large carriers and a lower one for small ones, which has no equivalent in Europe.

Israel flight delay compensation is the outlier on timing. Nothing is owed for a three-hour delay; the law's threshold for a long delay is eight hours, and only then do its distance bands apply.

In all four regimes, the clock that counts is the arrival clock, not the departure clock. If you are curious how those minutes are measured, we explain how arrival delay is judged against the three-hour line.

The Canadian and Israeli figures we have not printed here

We have given exact amounts for EU261 and UK261 because the regulation text fixes them. We have not printed the Canadian dollar or shekel figures on this page, because we have no published source cited here to point you at, and the Israeli amounts move with index-linking.

So treat the last column of the first table as a structure, not a quote. The trigger and the shape of each scale are right; the number is one you should take from the statute or from us on your specific flight.

How long you have to claim under each regime

How long you have to claim is one of the messiest parts of the comparison. Under EU261 today, the deadline varies by country — some allow a year, others several years. There is no single European figure to quote, and UK261 follows the same country-by-country pattern.

A single EU-wide claim deadline has been discussed, but no confirmed date for such a change has been reported, so we are not printing one here. Until any change is confirmed, the current position stands: national deadlines apply, and there is no fixed EU-wide clock for when an airline must pay.

File your claim under the national deadline that applies now, rather than waiting on a change that has not been confirmed.

Five steps to work out which regime pays you

1. Note the airport you departed from and the airline's country of licence. Those two facts decide the regime.
2. Take the arrival time from the aircraft doors opening, not the landing time, and work out the delay in whole hours.
3. Measure the great-circle distance of the flight, which sets the band under EU261, UK261 and the Israeli law.
4. Check the reason the airline gave. Every regime has a carve-out for events outside the airline's control, and strikes by its own staff usually are not one, as set out in our guide to strike compensation.
5. Check your flight and the amount owed before the national deadline runs.

If you want us to run it, we charge a flat €39 per passenger and only if the claim succeeds, or €8 for the do-it-yourself package. No percentage of your compensation, in any currency.