Flight Compensation

European air passenger rights, known as EC 261, give money to passengers whose flights are cancelled, heavily delayed or overbooked. Switzerland applies them through its air transport agreement with the EU, so a flight from a Swiss airport is covered in the same way as one from an EU airport.

The rule covers any flight departing from Switzerland or the EU regardless of the airline, and flights arriving in Switzerland or the EU when the airline is European. A Zurich to New York flight is covered; a New York to Zurich flight is covered on Swiss or Edelweiss but not on an American carrier.

It applies to the ticket you hold, not the price you paid. A cheap ticket and an expensive one on the same delayed flight are owed exactly the same amount.

Compensation is fixed by distance, not by ticket price: 250 euros for flights up to 1,500 km, 400 euros for flights between 1,500 and 3,500 km and for longer flights inside Europe, and 600 euros beyond that.

It is paid per passenger. A family of four on a cancelled long-haul flight is owed up to 2,400 euros, which is why airlines do not volunteer the information.

The compensation is separate from a refund and from the cost of the replacement flight. Being rebooked does not cancel the entitlement, and neither does accepting a voucher unless you signed away the claim.

For a delay, the clock that matters is arrival, not departure. Three hours or more late at the destination gate opens the claim; two hours and fifty minutes does not.

For a cancellation, the amount depends on how much notice you were given and what alternative was offered. Less than fourteen days' notice usually means compensation unless the replacement flight was very close to the original times.

Denied boarding — being bumped from an overbooked flight against your will — is compensated immediately. Volunteering to give up your seat in exchange for a deal is a different thing, and once you accept it you have made your own arrangement.

The regulation excuses airlines for extraordinary circumstances — events genuinely outside their control. Severe weather, air traffic control strikes, security alerts, bird strikes and closed airspace all qualify, and in those cases no compensation is due however long the wait.

Technical faults generally do not qualify. Courts have repeatedly held that keeping aircraft serviceable is the airline's own business, so a mechanical problem is usually claimable even though it will be described as unforeseeable.

A strike by the airline's own staff is normally not extraordinary either. A strike by airport or air traffic control staff usually is. Airlines rarely draw that distinction for you.

Keep the boarding pass and the booking confirmation. They prove you were on the flight, and a claim without them is slower and sometimes refused.

Photograph the departure board showing the delay or cancellation, and the desk notice if there is one. It is evidence that costs nothing and cannot be recreated later.

Ask staff for the reason in writing and write down the time you actually arrived. Keep receipts for food, transport and a hotel; those are reimbursable separately from the compensation.

You can claim directly and it costs nothing. Write to the airline with the flight number, date, booking reference and the compensation you are owed. Some pay within weeks; others do not reply, reject on a boilerplate excuse, or offer a voucher worth less than the cash.

A claims service takes the case on a no-win-no-fee basis and keeps a share — typically a quarter to a third — of what it recovers. You get less, but only if there is something to get, and they carry the correspondence and the legal threat.

The trade is straightforward: claim yourself and keep everything if the airline behaves, or hand it over and keep most of it without doing the work. For a rejected or ignored claim, the service is usually the difference between some money and none.

Old flights still count. The deadline is set by national law rather than by the regulation, and it runs to years rather than months in most of Europe, so a flight from two or three summers ago may still be claimable.

The limit depends on where the claim is brought, which usually means where the airline is based or where the flight departed. In Switzerland the ordinary limitation period is measured in years, not weeks.

The practical limit is your own records. People rarely lose a claim to the deadline; they lose it because the boarding pass is gone and the booking email was in an account they no longer use.