KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flight compensation: delayed or cancelled

Did you experience a disruption on your flight with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines? Select the relevant section below to learn about your rights in the event of a delay, cancellation, denied boarding, or missed connection.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines counts as an EU/EEA airline, so these rules can apply both to flights departing the EU/EEA and to flights into the EU/EEA that KLM Royal Dutch Airlines operates. The route and the actual operating carrier always decide a specific case.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is based primarily at Amsterdam Schiphol. Which rules apply is always decided by the specific route and the operating carrier, wherever the flight begins.

Of the example routes between UK airports and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines' base at Amsterdam Schiphol, the longest is Amsterdam–Belfast at 771 km and the shortest is Amsterdam–London Stansted at 313 km. Distance decides the level set out in Article 7: all 17 routes fall at €250. The amounts are per passenger and assume the other conditions are met. The routes are distance examples to illustrate the levels. They do not mean that KLM Royal Dutch Airlines operates them.

Routes connecting KLM Royal Dutch Airlines' base at Amsterdam Schiphol with UK airports are shown in the direction in which the flight departs from the EU/EEA, because EU261 can apply to such flights whichever airline operates them. Flights into the EU/EEA operated by an EU/EEA airline are also covered by EU261, while flights departing the UK may instead fall under UK261, with amounts in pounds; see ‘How EU261 applies to KLM Royal Dutch Airlines’ below.

As an EU/EEA air carrier, flights on which KLM is the operating air carrier are normally covered by Regulation (EC) No 261/2004, both on departure from the EU/EEA and on flights to the EU/EEA from a third country. However, it is always the route and the carrier actually operating the flight (KLM Cityhopper, for example, or a partner airline on a codeshare) that decides whether the Regulation applies in an individual case, not where the ticket was bought or whose brand appears on it.

KLM Cityhopper B.V. is a separate air carrier within the KLM group; according to KLM's official newsroom, "KLM and KLM Cityhopper form the core of the KLM group", so a journey booked with KLM may have KLM Cityhopper as the operating air carrier. KLM has been part of the Air France-KLM group since 2004. On a codeshare, another carrier may be the operating one, and it is the operating air carrier that determines responsibility under Regulation (EC) No 261/2004.

If your KLM flight was delayed or cancelled, the operating carrier matters, and that can be KLM or KLM Cityhopper, a separate carrier in the group, which KLM's newsroom describes as forming the core of the KLM Group. The Dutch authority (ILT, which calls itself CAA NL on its English page) states on its website that a claim for a delayed or cancelled flight should be sent to the airline first, that the airline must respond within two months, and that you can report to the authority up to one year after the flight. It also says it does not handle individual compensation requests. Which rules apply to your case depends on the route and on who operated the flight.