FlightCompensations

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Strikes & mass disruptions

Airline strikes and your rights

Airline strikes can pay compensation: a walkout by the airline’s own staff usually does qualify, while an air-traffic control or airport security strike usually does not. These event-by-event guides show which flights a strike hits, whether compensation applies and what to do while you’re stuck. General rules live in our strike compensation guide.

How do we cover current airline strikes as they happen?

A strike week is short and loud. Rosters collapse on the Monday, the airline cancels in blocks, and by Friday the story has moved on while the claims have not. We publish a page for each event as it starts, naming the airline, the union, the dates and the airports, so a passenger can see whether their own flight sits inside it.

When this page lists no event, no strike is running. The rules on whose strike it was still apply to a strike you flew through last month or last year.

Do strike compensation rights depend on whose strike it was?

One question decides the money. If the airline’s own staff walked out, the strike is part of the business and the fixed payment of €250 to €600 stands. If air-traffic control, airport security or ground handlers struck, the airline can usually show the cause was outside its control and owes care instead.

Who went on strikeFixed payment of €250 to €600Care: food, drink, a hotel if overnight
The airline’s own pilots or cabin crewStandsOwed
Air-traffic control, airport security or ground handlersUsually not owed, if the airline shows the cause was outside its controlOwed

The burden of proof sits with the airline, not with you. Our strike compensation guide sets out how that argument runs, and the case law summary covers the judgments behind it.

What should you do during a strike week?

Take the rerouting the airline offers and keep every receipt for the meals and the room. Photograph the board. Ask which union called the action, because that single fact is what your claim turns on later.

Then check the flight. Our two-minute check reads the record, and the stranded guide covers the night itself.

What do passengers ask about airline strikes?

Does a strike cancel my right to compensation?

Not by itself. The question is whose strike it was. When the airline's own pilots or cabin crew walk out, courts across Europe treat that as part of running an airline, and the fixed payment stands. When air-traffic controllers or airport security strike, the airline can usually show the cause was outside its control.

The airline says the strike was extraordinary. Can I argue?

Yes, and passengers win these arguments regularly. The airline has to prove two things: that the cause sat outside its control, and that no reasonable measure would have saved your flight. A letter asserting extraordinary circumstances proves neither. Ask which union struck and what the airline did about it.

What is the airline required to give me during a strike?

Care, whatever caused the walkout. That means food and drink in proportion to the wait, two phone calls or emails, and a hotel with transfers if you are held overnight. This duty never falls away, not even when the strike is genuinely extraordinary.

My flight was hit by a strike last year. Is it too late?

Almost certainly not. Claim deadlines are national and generous: one year in Poland, three in Germany, five in France and Spain, six in the United Kingdom. The EU261 reform approved in July 2026 will replace these national limits with one 9-month deadline across the EU, expected from the second half of 2027; until then the national limits apply. Old strike weeks are among the most claimable flights there are, because the disruption is a matter of public record.

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