Extraordinary circumstances: what airlines can't hide behind

Almost every refused compensation claim comes back with the same two words. This is what they mean, and what they don't.

The rule

Regulation 261/2004 says an airline does not have to pay compensation if the delay or cancellation was caused by "extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken". Two tests, both of which the airline has to prove: that the cause was extraordinary, and that it did everything reasonable to avoid the effect.

The European Court of Justice has read the phrase narrowly since 2008 (Wallentin-Hermann v Alitalia): an event has to be outside the normal exercise of the airline's activity and beyond its actual control.

What counts

• Severe weather at the departure or arrival airport at the time: thunderstorms, snow closing the runway, fog below landing minima, winds above the aircraft's limits.
• Air traffic control restrictions or airspace closures that actually affected your flight.
• Strikes by people the airline doesn't employ: air traffic controllers, airport staff, ground handlers (though an airline's own staff striking is not extraordinary; the ECJ decided that in Krüsemann v TUIfly in 2018).
• Security incidents, political instability, a bird strike on that specific flight.

What doesn't

• Technical faults. The most common refusal and the most clearly wrong. In Huzar v Jet2.com (2014) the Court of Appeal held that a technical problem discovered during routine maintenance, or on the day, is part of running an airline. It is not extraordinary.
• Crew problems. Sickness, running out of legal hours, a missing crew member. All within the airline's control.
• The incoming aircraft was late. Known as "knock-on" or "rotational" delay. If the earlier delay was itself the airline's responsibility, so is yours.
• Operational reasons. A phrase that means nothing; ask what the reason actually was.
• Weather somewhere else that did not affect your aircraft. Weather is extraordinary only if it prevented your flight.

How we check

When a claim is drafted we hold the airline's actual arrival time from flight-data providers and the weather reports (METARs) from both airports around your flight's times. When an airline cites weather, we look. If the reports show clear skies, the refusal is challenged with the data attached. If they show a thunderstorm over the airport at your departure time, we tell you honestly that the airline is probably right.