Cancelled flight

Work out what you can demand and send the demand to the airline

With our free tool, the Flight Calculator, you enter information about your air travel to find out what rights you have.

Send your demand to the airline

Always contact the airline to make your demands. If you have bought your ticket from an travel agency you should still contact the airline. If your booking includes several flights with different airlines you should contact the airline that is responsible for the cancelled flight.

If you are demanding compensation for costs that occurred because of the delayed flight, you need to send proof of the costs, for example receipts. You should send your demands within two months from the incident.

Waiting for a response from the airline

Once you have sent your complaint in to the airline, you need to wait for an answer from the airline. It usually takes a few weeks to get an answer, but if you have waited more than six weeks without getting an answer, you can take the next step with your case.

Special rules for cancelled flights within the EU

Within the EU, there are special rules from flights that may give you the right to help when the flight is delayed or cancelled. You may also be entitled to compensation in the form of a standard amount in euros.

The EU rules apply in the following cases:

• When you are flying from an airport within the EU.

• When you are flying from an airport outside the EU to an airport within the EU with an airline registered in the EU.

These rules also apply to Norway, Iceland and Switzerland in the same way as for all of the EU countries.

If your flight is not covered by the EU rules, you do not have a right to compensation in the form of a standard amount. However, you may be entitled to expenses you are forced to pay.

Always entitled to rebooking or a refund

When your flight is cancelled and it is covered by the EU rules, you are always entitled to one of the following options:

• Rebooking to the next available flight or to a later time

• A refund for the part of the ticket that you were unable to use

The airline must always offer you the choice between rebooking and a refund. This applies regardless of the reason that the flight is cancelled, and regardless of when you received the information that the flight was cancelled.

Rebooking

If the trip is rebooked, it should be rebooked to a comparable trip. If you have to wait for more than two hours, the airline should offer you free food and drink in reasonable proportion to the wait. The airline must also inform you of what rights you have. If you have chosen to be rebooked to the next available flight and it means that you remain at the airport or at the destination one or more nights, the airline must pay for an overnight stay at a hotel.

Refund

When you are to receive a refund, the airline is obliged to pay back your ticket costs within seven days. A refund shall be made in cash, with an electronic bank transfer, bank giro transfer or check. If you agree to it, a refund can be made through vouchers or in another manner.

A refund of the ticket means that the agreement with the airline is ended, and that you must yourself be responsible for getting home. Then, the airline does not need to pay for food, drink or hotel costs, for example.

Your right to financial compensation

There are two kinds of financial compensation you may be entitled to when your flight is cancelled. One is called compensation and the other is called damages.

Compensation

You may be entitled to compensation in the form of a standard amount in euros if your air travel is covered by the EU rules. The compensation is intended to compensate you for the time you lost. How much you are entitled to depends on the length of the flight:

• EUR 250 for all flights of no more than 1,500 km.

• EUR 400 for all flights within the EU longer than 1,500 km and for all other flights that are between 1,500 km and 3,500 km long.

• EUR 600 for all other flights covered by the EU rules.

The length of the flight is calculated from the departure point to your final destination regardless of whether or where you transfer and where the delay occurred.

Your right to compensation is determined by when you were notified of the new travel time and how much it differs in time from the original time. In the following cases, you are not entitled to compensation:

• When you received information about the change 14 days or more before the planned departure.

• When you received information about the change 7-13 days before the planned departure, and your new departure time is no more than two hours before the original departure time and your new arrival time is no later than four hours after the original arrival time.

• When you received information about the change less than seven days before the planned departure, and your new departure time is no more than one hour before the original departure and your new arrival time is no later than two hours after your original arrival time.

Damages

Regardless of whether your flight is covered by the EU rules or not, you may be entitled to compensation for expenses you have because of the cancelled flight. This may involve, for example, that you were forced to buy food at the airport, missed a hotel night or lost work income. You must be able to prove what expenses you had, and they must be tied to the delay. Save all of the receipts for your expenses as evidence.

You cannot receive financial compensation for mental suffering, the trouble of having to wait, feelings of discomfort or similar difficulties due to the cancelled flight.

In these cases, you are not entitled to financial compensation

The airline is not obliged to pay financial compensation in the form of the standard amounts in euros if the delayed or cancelled flight is due to extraordinary circumstances. Extraordinary circumstances mean events that are beyond the airline’s control that cannot be avoided even if all reasonable steps are taken.

There are no defined situations that are always considered to be extraordinary. This must be assessed case by case. But there are examples of circumstances that may be extraordinary:

• Political instability

• Weather conditions that make it impossible to fly

• Security risks

• Unforeseen deficiencies in flight safety

• When a strike happens that affects the operations of the airline.

Technical faults on the aircraft are usually seen as extraordinary events.

It is up to the airline to prove that the delayed or cancelled flight was due to an extraordinary circumstance. The airline must also be able to prove that they did everything they could to avoid the flight being delayed or cancelled.

If the airline refers to extraordinary circumstances/force majeure

Sometimes, airlines refer to extraordinary circumstances and therefore do not pay out any compensation. The airline first makes its own assessment of what happened and decides if they will pay out compensation or not. If you do not agree with the airline’s assessment, there are places you can forward your case to in order to get a free and impartial assessment.

How to get an assessment of your case

The body that should review your case depends, among other things, on the kind of compensation you are demanding and the country in which the problem with the flight arose. Contact us and we will provide information on where you can turn to.

Contact us