07-04-2025
EU regulations could leave British air passengers out of pocket
The European Union is considering watering down the regulation that protects air passengers, a move which could have a knock-on effect on British holidaymakers.
The regulation under scrutiny, commonly known as EU261, was passed in 2004. It is this that ensures European air passengers are compensated and assisted if a flight is cancelled with little notice, or delayed by more than three hours. Compensation rates range from €250-600 (£213-510), depending on the length of the flight.
For the best part of two decades, the European parliament has debated softening the regulation in favour of airlines by raising the delay compensation threshold from three to five hours. Now, EU261 is under the spotlight once again.
You may be thinking: we left the European Union in 2020, why would any of this affect the UK?
After Brexit, the UK voluntarily adopted EU261 into law, meaning passenger rights remained unchanged. But the UK now retains agency over this policy. So if modifications were made in Brussels, the UK Government would have to decide whether to adopt the amendments or keep UK261 in its current form.
Airlines would no doubt lobby the UK Government to bring the rules into line with the EU. If carriers such as Ryanair and Wizz were able to sidestep millions of pounds of compensation payouts thanks to a five-hour delay threshold, this would mean a big boost for their bottom lines and a likely reduction in ticket fares – Ryanair estimates that EU261 costs passengers £7 per ticket.
If the UK refused to modify the compensation rules in line with the EU, the likes of British Airways, easyJet and Jet2 would find themselves competing on an uneven playing field. Low-cost airlines have previously estimated that EU261 payments amount to 3 per cent of annual turnover, although none were able to disclose the exact figures due to competition concerns.
Even if the UK did not decide to adopt modifications to EU261, air passengers flying with European carriers such as Ryanair or Wizz would still be subject to new five-hour compensation rules if flying from a European airport. So, whatever happens, the current snail-paced conversations taking place in Brussels are indeed of concern to the British holidaying public.
Given that we are talking about a possible compensation threshold increase from three to five hours, would this really make a big difference?
It appears so. In 2024, more than 287 million passengers in Europe were affected by cancellations and delays, according to the Association of Passenger Rights Advocates (APRA). And the vast majority of those were for delays of less than five hours. Different consumer group estimates suggest that tweaking the delay threshold could reduce the number of passengers eligible for compensation by between 75 and 85 per cent.
Which Travel? has historically warned the government against bowing to pressure from airlines to weaken passenger rights, particularly against a backdrop of widespread flight disruption in recent years.
Ivaylo Danailov, the chief executive of SkyRefund, says: 'The EU261 regulation has been a major success for consumers, the travel industry, and European leadership. Modifications to EU261 should be made to enhance consumer rights, not degrade them.'
Some argue that reducing delay payouts could (perhaps counter-intuitively) be a good thing for air passengers. Aside from the potential for lower airfares, as alluded to by Ryanair, aviation insiders say that overhauling the compensation system could reduce cancellations.
On this point, a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association (IATA) told The Telegraph: 'We would support that change, as we feel it could actually lead to fewer cancellations overall, which would be to passengers' benefit.'
A single flight delay on a short-haul European service could cost an airline operating a 180-seat aircraft £39,600. It is no surprise, then, that carriers are known to pre-emptively cancel flights ahead of delay-prone peak periods. EasyJet did this just last year, pre-emptively canning 1,700 flights from Gatwick between July and September due to air traffic control challenges. EU261 reform might encourage a less cautious approach in the future.
When it comes to on-the-day cancellations, if airlines had a less stringent delay payout threshold, they might be inclined to use their additional two hours of wiggle room to resolve the problem at hand (staffing, aircraft positioning, mechanical issues) or wait for weather conditions to resolve, rather than cancel the service entirely.
So far, so many hypotheticals. The upshot for British holidaymakers is as follows: the reform of EU261 has been a decades-long discussion (some of the people in the meeting room in Brussels may not have been born when the regulation first passed). So while the subject is back on the table, there is no reason to expect immediate changes, nor any indication that the UK would absorb any such changes into law.
The latest update on the matter came via Apostolos Tzitzikostas, the European sustainable transport and tourism commissioner, who said at a conference of airline chief executives in Brussels this week: 'Negotiations on passenger rights reform are moving forward. We cannot create rules that overwhelm the industry with financial burdens, that risk holding back growth. So we need to balance financial stability for airlines with strong protections for passengers.'
Like an air passenger gazing longingly at a departures board, powerless to their fate, we can do nothing at this stage but patiently observe and hope for a positive outcome – whatever that might be.
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