Flight delayed by three hours: when the airline has to pay
What counts is arrival at the final destination, timed when the first aircraft door opens, not the late departure.
Your compensation · FRA · Frankfurt am Main → PMI · Palma de Mallorca
€250
per passenger, no deduction · owed
- EU Regulation 261/2004€250 · owed
Three hours or more late at the final destination: full compensation (CJEU, Sturgeon).
- Great-circle distance
- 1,251 km
- Distance band
- up to 1,500 km
- Time limit in Germany (BGB s. 195, 199)
- 31 December 2029
Write the claim letter to the airline
Prepared by Radif Partners · Method · law as of October 22, 2026 · 4,008 airports (OurAirports)
Under EU Regulation 261/2004 you are owed compensation when your flight reaches its final destination three hours or more after the scheduled arrival time. The regulation itself does not say so: the Court of Justice read it into the text in the 2009 Sturgeon judgment, putting long-delayed passengers on the same footing as passengers whose flight was cancelled. The clock stops when, after landing, a door is opened and passengers are allowed to leave the aircraft, not when the wheels touch the runway or the aircraft reaches the stand. The amount depends only on the great-circle distance: €250 up to 1,500 km, €400 up to 3,500 km and for every intra-EU flight over 1,500 km, €600 beyond. On long-haul routes the airline may cut the payment to €300 when the delay stays under four hours. In the UK, the retained UK261 applies the same three hours with £220, £350 and £520. For flights from 23 October 2027, Regulation (EU) 2026/2202 requires a delay exceeding three hours, so arriving exactly three hours late will no longer be enough.
Three hours, minute by minute
The calculator above is set to a delay of three hours and five minutes from Frankfurt to Palma de Mallorca. The great-circle distance is 1,251 km, first band: €250 per passenger. Set the minutes to 2 hours 59 and the result drops to zero. That boundary is where most disputes sit, because airlines tend to quote the landing time rather than the moment the door opened.
| Arrival at final destination | Up to 1,500 km | 1,500 to 3,500 km | Long haul outside the EU |
|---|---|---|---|
| under 3 h | nothing | nothing | nothing |
| 3 h to under 4 h | €250 | €400 | €300 (reduced) or €600 |
| 4 h or more | €250 | €400 | €600 |
Inside the European Union there is no third band: even Hamburg to Gran Canaria, 3,528 km, stays at €400. The 50% reduction only concerns long-haul flights to or from outside the Union, and it is an option for the airline, not automatic.
How much for which delay?
EU261 today
€300
| EU261 from 23 Oct 2027 | €300 |
| UK261 | £260 |
Why three hours when the regulation never says it
The 2004 text only grants compensation for cancellation and denied boarding; for delays it only required care. In Sturgeon the Court held that passengers arriving three hours or more late suffer a loss of time comparable to passengers rebooked after a cancellation, and must be treated alike. The threshold was confirmed in Nelson (2012) and is now written into the text by Regulation (EU) 2026/2202, with the word “exceeding”.
What the airline can argue
Payment falls away only if the delay was caused by extraordinary circumstances that could not have been avoided even with all reasonable measures. An ordinary technical fault does not qualify under settled case law, nor does a strike by the airline’s own staff; severe weather, air traffic control restrictions or a bird strike can. See extraordinary circumstances and strikes. In a knock-on delay what counts is the cause of your own flight’s delay and what the airline did afterwards to recover the schedule.
UK flights and Canada
Flights from the UK fall under UK261, the retained version, with the same three hours and amounts in pounds: £220, £350 and £520; the Civil Aviation Authority applies the same reading. Canada’s APPR also starts at three hours, but its amounts rise with the length of the delay instead of the distance: see flight delay compensation in Canada.