EU261 Compensation Rules 2026: What Actually Changed in July

For thirteen years, the EU has been trying to rewrite the rules on flight delay compensation, and for thirteen years it mostly failed to agree on anything. Airlines wanted the three-hour delay threshold pushed out to five or six hours, which would have quietly wiped out most claims without anyone having to admit compensation got worse. Passenger groups wanted it left alone. On 7 July 2026, MEPs voted 646 to 12 to approve a reform — a margin so lopsided it's less a vote than a formality — and the headline result is almost boring: the money didn't move. (Thirteen years of lobbying to end up exactly where you started is its own kind of achievement, and not the kind anyone puts in a press release.)

ℹ️ What The Vote Changed

The EU261 reform passed on July 7, 2026 by 646 votes to 12. Compensation amounts and the three-hour delay threshold stay exactly as they were — up to €250, €400 or €600 depending on distance. What's new is a shorter claim deadline, a free personal item in the cabin, and faster rerouting rights, none of which take effect until the second half of 2027.

The compensation scale that's been in place for two decades survives untouched: up to €250 for flights under 1,500km, up to €400 for flights between 1,500 and 3,500km (and all other intra-EU routes), and up to €600 for anything longer. The three-hour delay threshold that triggers a claim also stays put — earlier Council drafts had proposed raising it to five hours or more, which would have quietly excluded a large share of delays that currently qualify. Parliament rejected that version and kept the status quo, according to reporting from AirHelp and other passenger-rights trackers following the vote. If you've ever filed an EU261 claim before, the amount you'd get for the same delay today is the amount you'll get once the reform actually takes effect. The framework covers any flight departing an EU airport on any airline, and any flight arriving in the EU on an EU-registered carrier — the geography of who's covered didn't change either.

The version that nearly passed was considerably worse for passengers than most of the coverage let on. Some Council proposals floated cutting payouts by up to two-thirds, or scrapping the tiered €250–€600 scale entirely in favour of a single flat €200 payment regardless of distance — a change that would have made a nine-hour transatlantic delay worth the same as a three-hour regional hop. Airlines had spent over a decade arguing the current system was too generous and too easy to claim against, particularly after third-party claims companies turned filing into a business of its own. None of the rollback proposals survived the final text. Whatever pressure airlines brought to the negotiation, it wasn't enough to move the number.

What did get through is a set of smaller, genuinely useful protections that stack on top of the unchanged compensation. Passengers now get one free personal item in the cabin — a bag under 40x30x15cm, though airlines can still charge for anything larger, and pricing has to be shown clearly at the time of booking rather than surfacing as a surprise at the gate. If an aircraft sits on the tarmac with doors closed for more than two hours, the airline has to return to the gate and let passengers off, with water, toilet access and climate control guaranteed throughout the wait. Rerouting rights also widen: an airline can no longer limit you to its own later flights when it's disrupted your trip — it has to offer the fastest available option, even if that means a rival airline, or a train or bus for shorter routes. Miss a connection because your first leg ran late, and the airline that operated that delayed leg is on the hook for rerouting you and covering meals or a hotel, not just the connecting carrier you never actually flew with. Bumped to a lower cabin class without asking? You're owed an automatic refund of 30 to 75% of that portion of the fare depending on distance, paid within 14 days rather than requiring a claim. And a travel voucher you never use converts to a full cash refund after 12 months instead of quietly expiring — you're also never required to accept a voucher over cash in the first place.

The change that actually requires you to do something is a new nine-month deadline to file a compensation claim with the airline, measured from the date of the flight. Several EU countries currently allow much longer windows to file — in some cases several years — so this is a genuine tightening for anyone who's been sitting on an old delay meaning to get around to claiming it eventually. Once the reform takes effect, 'eventually' stops being a viable plan, and the smarter habit is filing as soon as a disruption happens rather than banking on a long statute of limitations that's about to shrink. None of this is live yet, though. Parliament's vote and the Council's expected sign-off only lock in the text — airlines then get roughly 12 months to adapt their systems, which puts the practical start date somewhere in the second half of 2027. A flight delayed tomorrow is governed by the old rules, not the ones that just cleared Parliament, so there's no need to rush a claim you were already planning to file.

The rule of thumb hasn't changed and the reform doesn't touch it: you're owed compensation when the airline caused the disruption — a technical fault, a crew scheduling problem, most staff strikes — and you're not owed cash (though you're still owed food, water and a hotel if needed) when the cause is genuinely outside the airline's control, like severe weather, air traffic control restrictions or a security threat. The grey area is real and airlines lean on it constantly, but the test is still the one it's always been: could the airline have reasonably prevented it? If the honest answer is yes, it's worth filing regardless of how the airline's own form tries to categorise it.

Vani doesn't file EU261 claims or adjudicate whether your specific delay counts as an airline's fault — that's a genuinely contested legal category even for lawyers who do this full-time, and no AI travel tool should pretend otherwise. What Vani does do is search and compare live flights so you can see connection times and layover risk before you book, which is the version of this problem worth solving before it happens rather than after. If a flight does go sideways, Vani can pull together a full booking checklist for whatever comes next, and the travel guide hub has more on planning trips that survive contact with reality.

Thirteen years of negotiation. The number is still €600. Bureaucracy, occasionally, holds the line.