My wife and I went on vacation to Mallorca a few weeks ago, but our arrival there was later than expected because our flight on British Airways was cancelled.
On the one hand that was a shame as it meant we missed out on an afternoon in the pool at our all-inclusive hotel. On the other hand though, we came out far ahead financially. For starters, we were able to rebook our rental car for a shorter period of time which saved us more than $100. Then even better than that, we were able to claim for UK261 compensation from British Airways which netted each of us £220 (~$300).
I’d made a UK261 compensation claim with United earlier this year and that was an easy process (you can read more about that and how to claim with United here). Each airline has you submit UK261 claims in different ways, so I thought it would be helpful to detail how to submit a UK261 claim with British Airways in case you ever find yourself in a similar position.
What is UK261?
You might be familiar with a similarly-named regulation called EU261. Without going into too much detail, it’s a consumer protection that provides compensation if your flight is delayed by many hours, or if it’s cancelled and you don’t arrive at your destination until several hours later. Tim and Nick have both made EU261 claims before, so I’d recommend reading those posts if you ever have a delayed/cancelled flight in or out of an EU country:
The thing is, the UK is no longer part of the EU and so EU261 legislation doesn’t apply there unless your flight is to or from an EU country. However, for consumer protection and regulatory stability for businesses post-Brexit, the UK government maintained many of the EU’s laws and regulations by creating equivalent UK ones. One of the maintained regulations was EU261, with the UK version thus being named UK261.
The way it works is that if your flight out of the UK is delayed, or if it’s cancelled and you’re rebooked on a flight where you arrive at least three hours late, you’ll receive the following compensation:
- Flights less than 1,500 km = £220 (~$290)
- Flights 1,500km-3,500km = £350 (~$462)
- Flights 3,500km+ for delays of more than 3 hours, but less than 4 hours = £260 (~$343)
- Flights 3,500km+ for delays of 4+ hours = £520 (~$687)
Similar compensation applies for flights in to the UK, but only if you’re traveling on a UK airline. For example, if you fly from New York to London on Virgin Atlantic and it’s delayed by three or more hours, you’ll be eligible for compensation. However, you won’t be eligible for the same compensation if the same thing happens when flying from New York to London with Delta, although it would apply with Delta on flights departing the UK.
There are various other aspects to the UK261 regulation, such as refunds if your delay is 5+ hours, as well as a flight back to your first point of departure where applicable if you choose not to proceed with your trip, or to be rerouted. There are also rules regarding what happens if you’re denied boarding; you can find the full details here.
Be aware that compensation is only available in situations that are deemed to be caused by the airline in one way or another. That includes mechanical issues, not enough flight attendants, pilot sickness, etc. However, if your flight is delayed due to something like bad weather, an air traffic control stop, hitting a bird during take-off, etc., you’re not eligible for compensation.
What led to my UK 261 claim
Our nonstop flight to Mallorca was due to depart from London Gatwick at 8:25am and arrive in Palma at 11:55am. When waking up that morning though, I noticed that I’d received both a text and an email from BA that our flight had been cancelled due to operational challenges.
The email went on to explain that I could either cancel the flight for a refund, or I could manage my booking to arrange an alternate flight to Mallorca.
We wanted to do the latter and, when clicking through, it appeared that we’d already been rebooked with Vueling. Vueling is a Spanish airline that’s part of IAG—the parent company of British Airways, Iberia, Aer Lingus, and LEVEL as well.
Unfortunately for us in terms of our arrival time in Palma, Mallorca, our originally-booked nonstop flight on British Airways had changed into a routing with a several hour layover in Barcelona. That meant we weren’t due to arrive in Palma until 5:55pm—precisely six hours after our originally scheduled arrival time.
Seeing as that was more than the three hour delay needed for UK261 compensation, we were eligible to make a claim.
Initial communication from British Airways regarding UK261
At the bottom of the email from BA advising that our flight had been cancelled was the following section:
Your consumer rights
Information on your consumer rights when your flight is cancelled, including rebooking or requesting a refund, can be found on ba.com/helpme.
That link takes you to this page which details your options. The email from BA didn’t make any mention of UK261 compensation, but that landing page does explicitly state that if your flight delay is more than three hours, you might be entitled to claim compensation depending on the reason for the delay.
Almost immediately after receiving that email notifying us of the flight cancellation, we received another email that provided a £10 (~$13.50) refreshment voucher per person. That had to be downloaded through Swiipr and could, in theory, be redeemed at airport restaurants, food outlets, and selected shops to buy food or beverage while waiting. Those refreshment vouchers are part of UK261 regulations for flights that are delayed for two or more hours. For what it’s worth, I tried downloading Swiipr but didn’t have any luck with accessing the vouchers. That wasn’t really an issue as we were able to go to a Priority Pass lounge, but I’m not sure how common that kind of issue is with these vouchers.
Then a minute after receiving those refreshment vouchers, we received a further email from BA, inviting us to chat to a live agent online to help us with rebooking.
Overall, I was impressed with the communication from British Airways. Ultimately, those communications were all regulatory requirements, but it was nice that they all came through automatically and promptly.
The only slightly disappointing aspect is that British Airways didn’t make it explicitly clear in their email that we were eligible for UK261 compensation. I can understand why they don’t do that as it costs them real money every time somebody makes a claim, but it does mean customers need to be aware of their UK261 rights and many aren’t.
We did hopefully cost British Airways even more money though. When waiting on the jetway to board our Vueling flight from Barcelona to Mallorca, we got chatting to the person in front of us and discovered that she was meant to have been on the same flight from Gatwick to Palma as us earlier that day. I asked her if she knew that she was eligible for £220 compensation; she hadn’t been aware, so she made a note about UK261 in order to make a claim later on. Apparently her flight had cost less than that, so that was a real bonus for her.
How to make a UK261 claim with British Airways
In theory, you should wait until arriving at your final destination to make a UK261 claim as your eligibility is based on how many hours late you arrive versus the originally scheduled time.
However, I didn’t do that and submitted our claim while in the Priority Pass lounge at London Gatwick airport, even before our first flight to Barcelona had taken off. That’s because there was simply no way that we were going to be able to arrive in Palma, Mallorca less than three hours after our originally scheduled arrival time, so to me it made sense to just get the claim form submitted while it was fresh in my mind.
To make a UK261 claim with British Airways, start at this page on their website.
Needless to say, you’ll need to select ‘Raise a new case’ if you’re submitting your claim for the first time. That’ll display numerous options for providing feedback or making a claim about your experience with BA; the one you need for UK261 compensation is ‘Delays, cancellations, and diversions.’
You’ll then be asked whether you had a delayed flight, cancelled flight, or a missed connecting flight. Seeing as our flight on BA was cancelled rather than simply delayed, I picked the middle option.
That gave us the option to either complain about the customer service we received, or to make a claim. As I mentioned earlier, I was happy about the service we received, so that wasn’t an issue and I selected ‘Make a claim.’
The following screen asked us what we wanted to claim for. That provided two claiming options: expenses incurred due to the cancelled flight and compensation we were legally entitled to. You can select one or both options in this section; we didn’t have any expenses as a result of the flight cancellation, so I just selected the latter option: compensation.
The process then asked if we had any other issues we wanted to report for the same booking reference. I didn’t, so I selected ‘No.’ If you do have further issues you want to report, I’m assuming it takes you back to one of the earlier screens—likely the initial screen where you select ‘Delays, cancellations, and diversions.’
After clicking ‘Next’, it asked for my booking reference and last name. The booking reference is the six digit alphanumeric reference code you use to pull up your flight details on the British Airways website, to check in, etc.
After entering the booking reference code, it brought up all our flight details; not only our originally flight that was cancelled, but the details of our rebooked flights too. I made a note to myself (for the purposes of this post) that you could select multiple flights at this stage if applicable, although the radio button rather than the checkbox in the screenshot below suggests that might not actually be the case.
Either way, for our specific claim that wasn’t an issue as I only needed to select one flight: the one directly from London to Palma.
At the bottom of that page I had to select which passengers were affected. That definitely does let you select one or more people, so I selected both me and Shae.
You’ll then be prompted to provide email addresses for each passenger, although that’s optional. If your British Airways Club number is linked to your booking, that’ll be displayed as well.
For what it’s worth, after originally booking our flight using BA Avios on my account at the start of this year, I used BA’s online chat function to switch my BA account number for my American Airlines AAdvantage account number as I have Gold status with American. My AA account number is what was displayed in that field, despite it saying that that’s where your BA account number would be.
The next screen asked if we’d been offered an alternative flight. We had, so I selected ‘Yes.’ You then have to check the box(es) for your rebooked flight(s). The screenshot below doesn’t show the entire screen as there were also the flight details for our Vueling flight from Barcelona to Palma.
After selecting our rebooked flights, I was asked if we wanted to claim for expenses. I didn’t, so I selected the option to continue without claiming expenses.
BA then asks who they should contact about the claim. If you’re submitting a UK261 claim with BA for more people than just yourself, you’ll also need to check the box beneath that dropdown box which asks you to confirm that you have permission from all the other people in your party to do that.
The dropdown box where we had to select who to contact had four options: me, my wife, a claim management company, or someone else. Seeing as I was the one submitting the claim, I selected myself. While you can enlist the help of a claim management company, I wouldn’t recommend it as they take a large chunk of your compensation as payment.
Having stated that I was the point of contact, it asked for my phone number, email address, and mailing address. If you’re from the US, remember to change the country code to +1 as +44 is the UK country code and I think it defaulted to that.
Having entered those details, British Airways asks for your the details of the bank account where compensation should be sent to. Even if you’re claiming for multiple people, you can request that each person’s payment be sent to different accounts.
As you can see in the screenshot below, BA will convert the compensation amount on the date of payment from GBP to whatever your local currency is. That hopefully minimizes fees you might incur at your end, although it might be that your bank still charges a fee for receiving an international wire transfer.
For what it’s worth, these are the fields you’ll have to complete if you do want your UK261 compensation payment sent to a checking account in the US.
Shae and I live in the UK now though, so I just entered our UK checking account details which meant that other potential fees weren’t an issue for us. These are the details needed for a bank account in the UK:
You then have to provide your billing information; don’t worry about the phrasing of that though as you’re not being billed anything—they just need to know the address associated with your checking account.
The final information that BA asks for is supporting information. This is optional, so you can just click through to the final screen if you want.
I decided to type out a quick summary of the reason I was making a UK261 claim, plus I uploaded a copy of the email we’d received from BA advising of the flight cancellation. I did that because the email had clearly stated that our flight had been cancelled due to operational challenges (i.e. it was BA’s fault, rather than our flight being cancelled due to some reason that was beyond their control like the weather or a ground stop.)
And that was it. The final screen asked us to review our case and that listed all the information that I’d entered so far; needless to say, I didn’t screenshot the entire page as that would’ve been too long.
After confirming that all the claim details were correct, I submitted the claim and received my case reference number. You should receive an email with that number, but I’d recommend also making a note of it or taking a screenshot just in case.
When we received our UK261 compensation from British Airways
I submitted our UK261 claim with BA on the morning of Thursday August 6. Four days later on Monday August 10 (so only two business days later), I received the following confirmation that our claim had been approved:
Dear Stephen Pepper,
We know your time is precious and we’re sorry your flight BA2670 on 06 August 2026 to Palma Mallorca didn’t operate as planned.
We’ve reviewed your claim and you’re entitled to compensation under Air Passenger Rights Regulations for the amount of £220.00 per customer.
We’ll transfer the total amount of £440.00 into your bank account within 14 business days, using the details you provided.
We’ve now closed your case. If you need to get in touch with us about this case in the future, just reply to this email. Please keep the original message in your reply as it links directly to your case so your response can be reviewed.
You can find helpful advice and information about your rights at ba.com/helpme.
We’re sorry again for the inconvenience and we hope to welcome you on board soon.
British Airways
The compensation subsequently landed in our account four days later on Friday August 14. That was only eight days from when I’d first submitted our claim, so I was pleased overall with the speed with which we received the payment.
Final thoughts
Having a delayed or cancelled flight is never fun, but UK261 compensation can soften the blow if you’re eligible.
The claiming process with British Airways is straightforward and intuitive, so I hope this post encourages you to make the minimal effort needed to submit a UK261 claim in the event that you encounter irregular operations with British Airways in the future. With a minimum of £220 (~$300) compensation per person at stake, it’s well worth it.
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