Understanding your Rights when Flights are cancelled: A Guide for Passengers

Few travel experiences are as frustrating as arriving at the airport… only to discover your flight has been cancelled.

Whether you’re travelling for business, heading off on holiday, or returning home, a cancellation can disrupt your plans and leave you wondering what to do next.

The good news is that passengers have a great deal of important rights when flights are cancelled. Understanding those rights can help you make informed decisions, minimise disruption, and know what steps to take if a dispute arises.

Read on to find out what you could be owed!

If you’ve hit a wall with an airline or airport, AviationADR offers a FREE, independent route to a resolution – approved by the Civil Aviation Authority to settle disputes between passengers and Participating Member airlines and airports across the UK and EU.

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Why do Flights get cancelled?

Airlines cancel flights for a variety of reasons. Some are outside their control, while others may be linked to operational decisions.

Common causes include:

Severe weather conditions
Air traffic control restrictions
Technical or mechanical issues
Crew shortages
Industrial action
Operational or scheduling changes

While the reason for a cancellation may affect whether you’re entitled to compensation, it does not remove an airline’s responsibility to support passengers during disruption.

What are your Rights?

If your flight is cancelled, your airline should inform you of your options as soon as possible. The most important thing you need to know is that, in any cancellation situation, you should normally be entitled to either a full refund or to be rebooked onto an alternative flight.

Depending on the circumstances, you may be entitled to:

A full refund if you decide not to travel
An alternative flight to your destination at the earliest available opportunity
Re-routing at a later date if that better suits your plans
Assistance while you wait for your replacement flight
Compensation for the inconvenience

Exactly what compensation (if any) you may be owed will depend on the circumstances surrounding your cancellation, including:

When you were informed
The reason the flight could not operate.

ALWAYS REMEMBER:

Compensation is not necessarily going to be paid to you automatically. If your flight got cancelled, and you believe the airline owes you, make sure to chase them up for this yourself – escalating with an Alternative Dispute Resolution scheme (such as AviationADR, which is FREE) if they leave you unsatisfied. Don’t wait around!

Refund or Re-routing: Knowing Your Options

When a flight is cancelled, many passengers assume they have no choice but to accept the first alternative offered. In many cases, that’s not true.

You may be able to choose between:

Receiving a full refund for the unused portion of your ticket
Travelling on another available flight to your destination
Rearranging your journey for a later date, subject to availability

Also – if you’re a transfer passenger whose connecting flight has been cancelled (and you’ve already travelled part-way through your journey), you are normally entitled to a flight back to your original departure point if you choose not to continue your journey. An airline should never leave you stranded!

Understanding your options allows you to choose the solution that best meets your needs rather than feeling pressured into making a quick decision.

The Airline’s Duty of Care

If your journey is delayed because of a cancellation, airlines also have responsibilities to look after passengers while they wait.

Depending on the length of the delay and the circumstances, this may include:

Food & drink vouchers
Hotel accommodation (where an overnight stay becomes necessary)
Access to reasonable means of communication (such as refunding the cost of calls you need to make)

If the airline cannot provide these arrangements directly on the day and you need to sort these necessities out yourself, keep receipts for any reasonable expenses you incur, as you can show these to them later and ask to be reimbursed.

Don’t take the support for granted, though!

If you’re buying for yourself with the hopes of being reimbursed later, don’t go to 5 star hotels and eat as much as you can on the airline’s dime – most airlines are only willing to cover what they consider necessities (and unfortunately, it’s probably quite hard to make a case for how necessary an en-suite with a jacuzzi is for an overnight stay).

Will you be entitled to Compensation?

So, let’s cut to the chase: does the airline actually owe you anything?

While passengers may be entitled to compensation in some situations, it is not automatic (as aforementioned, you’ll likely need to file a complaint, and chase the organisation up yourself in order to secure it)!

Whether compensation is payable depends on several factors, including:

How much notice the airline gave you before the cancellation
The length of your flight (distance)
How late you arrive at your destination
Whether a suitable alternative flight was offered
The reason for the cancellation

For example, events such as severe weather or certain air traffic control restrictions may be considered outside the airline’s control and could affect whether compensation is due. Each case should be assessed on its own facts.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom! If your airline gave you less than 14 days’ notice of the cancellation, you could be owed between £110-£520 in compensation depending on the cause & length of flight.

The specifics of this are rather detailed, so we highly recommend you check the Civil Aviation Authority’s Cancellations webpage for in-depth information.

What should you do if your Flight is cancelled?

Taking a few simple steps can make resolving any future complaint much easier. Take it from us – we run an ADR scheme that specialises in resolving airline & airport complaints!

It’s a good idea to:

1. Keep your boarding pass and booking confirmation
2. Save emails, text messages, and app notifications from the airline
3. Ask for the reason your flight was cancelled
4. Keep receipts for reasonable additional expenses (such as food & drink)
5. Make a note of the time you were informed of the cancellation
6. Submit a formal complaint using the airline’s published complaints procedure!

Step 6 is the most important one. As we keep reminding you – compensation is not necessarily automatic. If you want any chance of getting it, you’ll need to ask for it!

What if the airline denies my cancellation complaint?

If the airline has investigated your complaint regarding a cancelled flight, and come to a Final Decision that you deem unsatisfactory (or they’ve ignored your complaint entirely), DON’T PANIC!

You can still escalate matters to pursue compensation – even for FREE, depending on the route you pick!

You could still:

Take your complaint to an ADR provider (such as AviationADR)
Take the airline to court

How can AviationADR help?

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) provides a straightforward alternative to court proceedings. It can offer passengers and airlines a fair, efficient way to resolve disputes without unnecessary time or expense.

AviationADR provides a FREE independent Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) service for eligible complaints between passengers and Participating Member airlines or airports.

This includes (but is not limited to) disputes relating to matters such as:

Flight delays
Flight cancellations
Denied boarding
Baggage issues
Customer service complaints

How it works:

Essentially, you bring your complaint to us (after giving the airline/airport in question 8 weeks to respond to your complaint directly), and we take a look at all the information and evidence available from both sides. We then reach a decision on who’s owed what (such as compensation)… all within 60 days of declaring a Complete Complaint File!

For more in-depth information, please see our Complaints Process Guide!

REMEMBER: We are far from being the only ADR provider covering air-travel. If you explore our site and discover that the airline/airport you travelled with are not Participating Members of our scheme, you can always go to a different ADR provider and see if they’re a Member of their scheme instead.