Missed Connection Compensation: Your Rights Under EU261

The one-booking rule: when a missed connection counts

EU261 only treats connecting flights as one journey when they were sold together on a single booking. Check your confirmation email. If every leg shares one booking reference — the six-character code airlines call a PNR — you are covered as one trip from start to finish. The airlines involved can be different, and a leg can even be a codeshare. What matters is the single booking.

Self-transfers are the painful exception. If you bought two separate tickets — say one with Ryanair and one with Vueling — the law sees two unrelated contracts. When flight one lands late and you miss flight two, neither airline owes you compensation for the missed connection. This is the most common reason these claims fail, so check your booking reference before anything else.

The delay that counts is at your final destination

You do not need a long delay on the first flight. The Court of Justice of the EU settled this in Folkerts (C-11/11). The passenger left Bremen about two and a half hours late, missed her connection in Paris, and reached São Paulo roughly eleven hours behind schedule. The court ruled that compensation depends on the delay at the final destination, not on any single leg.

The rule cuts both ways. A 25-minute delay that snowballs into a missed connection and a next-day arrival supports a full claim. But if the airline reroutes you so well that you reach your final stop less than three hours late, no compensation is due — even though you missed a flight along the way. Care and rebooking rights still apply while you wait.

How much you can claim: the whole journey sets the amount

The payout is fixed by distance, and the distance is measured as the straight line (great-circle) from your origin to your final destination. The missed leg on its own is irrelevant. Fly Lisbon to Tokyo via Frankfurt on one booking, and the Lisbon–Tokyo distance decides the tier.

These figures are per passenger, and they are unchanged in 2026. The amount does not depend on your ticket price, so a cheap seat can pay out several times what the fare cost.

• €250 — journeys up to 1,500 km
• €400 — journeys within the EU over 1,500 km, and all other journeys between 1,500 and 3,500 km
• €600 — all other journeys over 3,500 km
• €300 — the €600 tier is halved if rerouting got you to your final destination less than four hours late

Connections outside the EU still count

Airlines sometimes reject claims because the missed connection happened outside Europe. The EU court has shut that door. In Wegener (C-537/17), a passenger flew Berlin to Agadir with a stop in Casablanca, and the disruption happened on the leg entirely outside the EU. Because the journey started in the EU on one booking, EU261 applied to the whole trip.

České aerolinie (C-502/18) went further. The passenger flew Prague to Bangkok via Abu Dhabi; the Czech airline flew the first leg and its non-EU codeshare partner caused a long delay on the second. The court held that the EU airline that sold the journey was liable for the whole thing. If your trip started in the EU on a single booking, a non-EU connection point or a non-EU partner airline is no excuse.

Your rights at the airport: rebooking and care

Once you have missed your connection because of the airline, it must offer you a choice: rerouting to your final destination at the earliest opportunity, rerouting at a later date that suits you, or a refund of the unused parts of the ticket — plus a flight back to your starting point if the trip has lost its purpose.

While you wait, the airline owes you care: meals and drinks in reasonable proportion to the waiting time, two free communications, and a hotel with transfers if you are stuck overnight. If nobody helps, pay for what you reasonably need and keep the receipts — you can bill the airline for these costs separately from compensation.

Evidence worth collecting

Strong claims are built at the airport, not weeks later. Spend five minutes gathering proof while it is still in front of you:

• Your booking confirmation showing one reference for all legs
• Boarding passes for every flight, including the rebooked ones
• A photo of the departure board showing the delay or cancellation
• The reason for the delay, in writing if possible — from the airline app, an email, or a gate agent
• Receipts for meals, hotels, and transport you paid for yourself
• The exact time you reached your final destination — when the doors opened, not the landing time

How to claim — and when a claim service earns its cut

Claiming directly with the airline is free, and for most missed-connection cases it is the right first move. Use the airline's compensation form, name the regulation, list the flight numbers, state the delay at your final destination, and say how much you are owed. Airlines must respond, and many pay clear-cut claims without a fight.

Claim-management companies typically charge around 25–35% of your compensation when they win, and nothing when they lose. That fee buys persistence: they are worth considering when the airline stonewalls or stays silent, when it hides behind a weak excuse, when only court action will move it, or when you simply cannot face the back-and-forth. FlightPayout's checker is free either way — you can find out what you are owed before deciding who chases it.