Meals, hotel and care during a flight delay

When a flight is heavily delayed or cancelled, you are entitled to more than just information. EU Regulation 261/2004 calls it assistance, and Article 9, which sets out what it covers, is headed 'Right to care'.

The core idea is simple: the airline must look after you while you wait. You should be offered meals and refreshments in reasonable relation to the waiting time. If an overnight stay becomes necessary, or you have to stay somewhere longer than you had intended, the airline should provide hotel accommodation together with transport between the airport and the hotel. All of this at no cost to you.

You also have the right, free of charge, to make two telephone calls or send two emails. The airline must in addition give particular attention to travellers with reduced mobility, anyone accompanying them, and children travelling alone.

The rules apply when you fly from an airport in the EU, or into the EU from a country outside it with an airline registered in the EU. Flights to and from Iceland, Norway and Switzerland are covered too.

For a delay, the right to care is governed by Article 6 of the regulation. The threshold depends on how long the departure is expected to be delayed beyond the scheduled time and on the distance of the flight: two hours or more for flights of 1,500 km or less, three hours or more for flights within the EU of more than 1,500 km and for all other flights of 1,500–3,500 km, and four hours or more for all other flights.

First you are entitled to meals and refreshments and to two telephone calls or emails. Hotel accommodation and transport become relevant when departure is reasonably expected no earlier than the following day, that is, when you genuinely need to stay overnight.

For a cancelled flight, an equivalent right applies under Article 5, which refers back to Article 9. There too, hotel accommodation and transport are included when rerouting means you cannot travel until the next day or later.

The right applies while you are waiting for the delayed flight, for re-routing at the earliest opportunity or for a return flight. If you instead take a refund of your ticket and make your own way, the airline no longer has to cover meals and a hotel. In exceptional cases the airline may also limit care if providing it would itself delay the departure further.

It is easy to confuse the right to care with the financial compensation under EU 261/2004, but they work differently. Care covers your actual needs on the spot: food, a roof over your head, transport. It is not paid out in cash, other than as reimbursement of expenses you were forced to incur yourself.

Compensation, by contrast, is a fixed amount that may apply on top for longer delays to the final destination or cancelled flights, provided the cause is not an extraordinary circumstance, and when you are denied boarding against your will. You may therefore be entitled to both, or to care alone if the cause was extraordinary.