Flight Delay Compensation Time Limit — How Long You Have to Claim, Country by Country

The flight delay compensation time limit is the deadline for bringing a claim, and it is set by national law rather than by the regulation itself. In the UK it is commonly six years. In parts of Europe it is as short as two. A flight from 2023 may still be claimable in one country and long expired in another.

This is not the same thing as how long your flight had to be delayed. If that is what you are after, the threshold is three hours on arrival, and we cover how long a flight delay has to be separately.

The flight delay compensation time limit, in one answer

Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 sets out what you are owed. It says nothing at all about how long you have to ask for it. That gap is filled by each country’s ordinary rules on how long a civil claim survives, which is why the answer changes as you cross a border.

So the honest short answer is that the flight delay compensation time limit depends on where the claim is brought, and the range across Europe runs from roughly two years to six.

Why the deadline depends on where you claim, not where you flew

Passengers assume the clock is set by the departure airport. Usually it is set by where the airline can be sued, which in most cases means where the airline is established, or where the flight departed from or arrived at.

A Rome to Manchester flight on an Italian carrier can often be pursued in either country. Those two countries do not have the same limitation period, and choosing well is occasionally worth more than anything else you do with the claim.

The deadlines, country by country

The figures below come from our market research file of August 2026. They are limitation periods in national law, they change, and they should be confirmed with the relevant national enforcement body before you rely on one:

Two caveats worth knowing. Scotland is frequently cited as five years rather than the six that applies in England and Wales. And Italy’s two-year figure is published by ENAC, the Italian civil aviation authority, as the window for lodging a complaint, which makes it one of the shortest in Europe.

Where a country is not on this list, we have no sourced figure for it, and we would rather say so than guess.

When the clock actually starts

In most systems it starts on the date of the flight, or the date the flight should have operated if it was cancelled outright. It does not restart because you complained, and it does not pause while the airline takes four months to answer you.

That last point catches people out. Passengers assume that opening a claim stops the clock. In most jurisdictions only issuing court proceedings does that. If you are close to the deadline and the airline has gone quiet, the correspondence is not protecting you.

Germany runs a variation worth flagging: the three-year period is commonly calculated from the end of the calendar year in which the flight took place, which can extend the practical deadline by several months.

What to do when you are close to the deadline

The payout does not shrink as the deadline approaches, so establish how much compensation for a delayed flight of your length is worth before deciding how much effort to spend on it. Then move the claim out of email and into a process with a record. Send a dated written demand to the airline that identifies the flight, the delay on arrival and the sum claimed. Then look at the two routes that carry weight: the national enforcement body or alternative dispute resolution scheme for the departure country, and, where the sum justifies it, a small claims action. Both take longer than the airline’s own process, which is set out in our guide to the flight compensation claim process.

If the deadline is weeks away rather than months, a claims service or a solicitor can file faster than most people manage alone, because the paperwork is already built. That is worth weighing against the fee.

The other time limits people confuse this with

Three separate clocks get mixed up, and only one of them is the flight delay compensation time limit:

• Three hours. The arrival delay that normally triggers a payment. Not a deadline.
• Seven days. The period within which an airline must refund a cancelled flight once you have chosen a refund over re-routing.
• Eight weeks. In the UK, the point at which you can usually take an unresolved complaint to the airline’s dispute resolution scheme without waiting for a final answer.

None of these shortens your right to claim. They govern what the airline must do, not what you must do.

Key takeaways

• The regulation sets no flight delay compensation time limit. National limitation law does, and it varies widely.
• Commonly cited limits: UK 6 years, Spain 5, France 5, Germany 3, Italy 2.
• The clock generally starts on the flight date and is not paused by complaining.
• Where a flight touches two countries, you may have a choice of where to claim.
• Confirm the figure with the national enforcement body before relying on it.

Frequently asked questions

How far back can I claim flight delay compensation?

As far back as the flight delay compensation time limit in the country where you bring the claim allows. Six years is common in the UK, two years in Italy, with several countries in between. Work out which country your claim belongs in first, then check that country’s limit with its enforcement body. The amount does not shrink because the flight was years ago; either the claim is in time or it is not.

Can I claim for a flight that was delayed two years ago?

In most European jurisdictions, yes. Italy is the notable exception in our records, where the published window is two years, so a claim at that point is already at the edge. A two-year-old claim is worth exactly the same as a fresh one, because the payout depends on distance rather than age.

Does the deadline change if the airline replies late?

Generally no. In most systems only formal legal proceedings stop the limitation clock, so a long exchange of emails offers no protection at all. If you are close to the deadline, escalate rather than continue negotiating, and keep every dated piece of correspondence.