Your Rights to Food, Lodging, and Compensation per EC261

TL;DR: Check your eligibility; don’t use companies to get compensation—it’s easy to do it yourself; save your receipts; and claim what you’re entitled to.

I was talking to some friends who had problems on a recent trip and it reminded me I never published this piece.

The Passenger Rights Regulation 2004 (Regulation (EC) No 261/2004), commonly referred to as EU 261, covers delays, cancellations, denied boarding, and changes. I won’t cover denied boarding or pre-communicated changes/cancellations, as the regulations are straightforward.

In the other two cases, delays and cancellations, the airline may be required to provide cash compensation, refreshments, communication, and accommodation. There are several flight categories with differing compensation amounts and timing associated with them. These are fairly obvious, so you can look them up. In short, once your delay exceeds 2 to 4 hours (depending on flying distance), you become eligible.

A same-day cancellation with a new flight option functions similarly to a long delay for the purposes of EC261. While legally distinct, I’ll discuss them interchangeably as the practical implications are the same for most travelers.

Cash Compensation and Communication

A lot has been written about cash compensation. Do an internet search, and don’t fall for one of the companies that offers to help you and takes 30-50% of your payment. You can do it directly with the airline as most of them have a web form. See below if they deny that you are eligible. Keep in mind that while the airline may not have to pay compensation except when the cause is outside of their reasonable control (weather, air traffic controller strike, airport closure, etc.), they generally always have a duty of care responsbility that includes food and lodging.

While communication (access to email and some phone calls) is generally straightforward and unneeded for most travelers, what isn’t discussed very much is the entitlement to meals/refreshments and accommodation.

Meals/Refreshments and Accomodation

On the meals front, the airline has to start offering meals and refreshments appropriate for the waiting time when you become eligible. Eligibility is based on the scheduled arrival. Keep in mind that airlines often pad flight schedules. Therefore, even if you think your flight falls into the 2-hour delay category, you might not become eligible for compensation until the actual delay exceeds 2.5 hours.

Most airlines will be good about providing delay refreshments and issue vouchers immediately or upon request. Some airlines, especially low-cost carriers (Ryan Air, Wizz Air, and their frenemies) as well as major carriers without onsite representatives (for example at small airports where they have one flight a day), may not. Confirm with the airline, but in those cases, save your receipts, buy food and drink (no alcohol) relative to the delay time, and file a claim.

Where things get interesting is when the delay spans overnight. At this point, they have to provide a hotel and transport to and from the hotel. Again, most airlines will give you vouchers and tell you where to go. They are paying so they get to choose. But some, again your low-cost carriers and when you’re at infrequently served bases, will do nothing. If you are talking to someone like Wizz Air, expect radio silence and vague comments from customer service. They won’t deny their responsibility, but they won’t tell you what to do. In my case, they said, “Save your receipts and submit them here,” but wouldn’t answer any questions about what is allowed or not.

Let’s illustrate this with a story and then talk about what to do if they say ‘no.’

My Story

My family spent two weeks on a beautiful island despite having planned to spend only one. Just as we left for the airport to fly home, we got a text that our flight was canceled. Their website offered a replacement flight the following week. I contacted customer service and was told that was my option: take it or leave it and get a refund for the unused travel. Unused travel refunds don’t buy last-minute tickets for four. We had flexibility, so we decided to “take it” and see what happens. Before you ask, they also refused our suggestions that they fly us home via another routing or flight set.

I tried to get details on what to do about food, ground transport, and lodging via the customer service chat and got vague answers and a link to a form to use to send receipts. I knew that receipts were going to be important, so I started saving everything! I also tried to get advice online. It was slim pickings, so I did my best. The big piece of advice I found was to not be extravagant, for example, stay at the same hotel you were in or one that is the same price.

I found a new hotel for us as our original one was sold out. The new hotel was cheaper despite being “better” by some star measures and the same by others. It was also called a “Resort,” but that doesn’t mean much in a vacation destination. I even joined the loyalty club to secure a 10% discount.

Next was food. This was pretty easy. We ate like we always eat. We were traveling with a small child, so we tended to eat more frequently and need lots of bottles of water and snacks. We saved receipts. I failed to take notes on exactly what every item on the receipt was. This would later come back to haunt me, as you’ll see below, so do this.

In addition to food and a hotel, we also needed some supplies and clean laundry. My child needed diapers, and we needed some new toys/distractions.

The Big Question: Did They Pay? … At first no

To be very clear, they didn’t want to. I took a staged approach to this. By coincidence, our flight to the island had been delayed by 3 hours. So I submitted those receipts and got them paid. This payment came pretty easily. I had my receipts, and they just transferred the money. Critically I now knew what the reimbursement system looked like.

Then I tried to claim the compensation for the canceled flight. Their automated form denied compensation, claiming there was an extraordinary event beyond the airline’s reasonable control. This wasn’t true. There was no weather or airport closure or similar at either end of the inbound flight. I realized I needed to dispute this.

First, I read everything the agencies that promise to get you compensation have on their website. I even filled in their forms to see if they wanted to take my claim without promising to let them have it. Here is where my negative opinion of them was sealed. They wanted 30-50% of the compensation payment as a fee in return for them doing the work for me and not charging me a fee to claim through them. However, their automated systems rejected my claims because … surprise, surprise … they are just front-ending the airline webforms. The airline said no to me and them, and they were unwilling to actually do the work required to fight it. Screw them.

Learn to Appeal to the NEB

I did more reading. In the European Union, every country has a National Enforcement Body (NEB) that deals with disputes and claims under the Passenger Rights Regulations 2004 for flights that originate in their country. Most of the NEBs, possibly all of them, work in both their national language and English. The NEBs can compel the airlines to show maintenance and ground logs as well as access airport records. Both NEBs I talked to were professional, competent and very nice. They answered my questions fully and left me feeling well prepared and heard.

Our delayed inbound flight was just minutes away from triggering compensation. I learned this by contacting the NEB for our origination country, Austria. The confirmed everything in the airport and airline records. It’s crucial to know that, for EC261 purposes, arrival is defined as the moment a door opens for passengers to disembark, not when the plane touches down. So, even if you’re on the ground, the delay clock doesn’t stop until that door opens. The delay doesn’t include any time it takes for you to physically exit the plane. Being in row 666 doesn’t make your delay time longer.

NEBs are the direct route to the authorities. The other option is to use an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) service. Many airlines try to get you to use these and the UK seems to require you to use them. They feel like they are on the side of the airline and take 6+ months to respond to anything. Then when they do respond, they give you a short window to reply before you have to wait again.

Armed with this knowledge about NEBs, I decided to pursue my claim for my canceled flight. Our canceled flight originated in Portugal, so we had to deal with the Portuguese authorities. At the time of my claim, they required you to send an email, so I sent an email with their provided form.

A reasonable time period later (less than 30 days, IIRC), we had a ruling that the flight cancellation was due to conditions within the control of the airline and a direct email address at the airline for a group that was supposed to get us paid for compensation. In our case, this was €1600 on flight tickets that totaled €909 round trip.

Once the compensation arrived, I pursued the claim for lodging, food, and more. Filing the claim was a bit of a pain, but I was familiar with the process from my delay claim. There is a lot of fiddly bookkeeping and requirements to separate items into different batches. This probably reflects how they process them. However, it also likely has the “added benefit” of upsetting just enough people into not filing claims. This makes it worthwhile to them to add some friction to this process. I am a master of spreadsheets and bullshit, so this did not stop me.

Again, in a reasonable amount of time, I received some of my money. Remember I now had a NEB decision in my favor and a backdoor email to poke them with.

Learn to Appeal to the Airline

They actually sent the bulk of the money I asked for. It was a pretty sizable amount, as we are talking about hotel and food with some ancillary costs for four people for a week in a vacation destination. But they denied some stuff too. Let’s take those apart:

• Some food claims were initialy denied. The airline won’t pay for alcohol. I am not going to argue with them. This is settled case law in Germany (IIRC), and I feel like it is reasonable. However, they claimed all kinds of things on my receipts were alcohol. I fought back on the line items by pointing out things like, “This is a brand of water in Portugal. It is 1.50 EUR. Here is the website.” They never relented on a few food items I knew weren’t alcohol but couldn’t prove.

  As an aside, they really paid someone to read every line item of every receipt. So I didn’t mind replying to every denial. It isn’t petty if they start it, right?

• They tried to deny our laundry as not being part of the required coverage. I sent a strongly worded reply about how our other option was to buy new clothes and charge them. I also pointed out that I saved them a boatload of money (perhaps as an airline a boatload is less impressive to them …) by going to a laundry and not just giving everything to the hotel. They did pay, but not for the unreceipted tip I gave in gratitude for the same-day service. This was around 40 EUR for 4 people for a week’s clothing so they were definitely digging deep for denials.

• They denied our local transportation bus tickets to and from restaurants and the laundry run. I called bullshit on this by pointing out that local transport is written into the regulations and that we had to get somewhere to eat. They don’t provide any guidance on, for example, eating every meal in the hotel.

  Then said they needed a receipt for every bus ticket, and I said there were none as they literally don’t give receipts on buses, just the tickets. I suggested they talk to their Portuguese staff members to verify this. They finally paid.

• They did deny some things like the diapers and the toys as items they are not obligated to pay for in the regulations. They wouldn’t budge on this despite stranding us for a week and, theoretically, being required to read my screed about what it is like to be a parent. They also refused to believe I once bought a drink from a vending machine.

Lessons Learned:

1. Save receipts.
2. Document every interaction you can with the airline. When you are in a chat, take screenshots. Save your emails. If you talk to a human, note their name and how/where you talked to them. Keep a contemporaneous record.
3. Don’t be extravagant. Be prepared to show that your expenses are in line with what you spent on the rest of your trip.
4. Write down what the receipt is for and identify “oddly” named items so you’ll remember.
5. Avoid vending machines and other things that don’t print receipts. Take pictures of things that are hard to receipt or which may be hard to prove.
6. Don’t give up! Push back and argue! Don’t be afraid to focus and fill in forms or send emails.
7. Save receipts.