EU flight rules change on 23 October 2027. What you get

After thirteen years of argument, the EU’s air passenger rules have been rewritten. Regulation (EU) 2026/2202 was signed on 16 September, published in the Official Journal on 2 October, and applies from 23 October 2027. Until that date the old rules stand. The headline is what didn’t change: compensation of €250 to €600 still starts at three hours late, which the Council had tried to push to four and six. The rest is a long list of smaller fixes that will matter on the day your flight falls over.

When it applies, and to which flights

The regulation applies from 23 October 2027. Nothing about your rights changes before then, however many headlines say otherwise.

It covers any flight departing from an EU airport, on any airline, and any flight arriving in the EU on an EU airline. For a traveller from Australia that means your Qantas or Qatar flight into Paris is not covered, your Air France flight home from Paris is, and so is the Ryanair hop from Dublin to Lisbon. The UK kept its own copy of the old rules after Brexit, and this reform does not touch them.

Compensation: the numbers that stayed

The amounts and distance bands survive intact, now written into the regulation itself rather than resting on court rulings.

You qualify when you reach your final destination more than three hours late, when a flight is cancelled with less than 14 days’ notice, or when you are denied boarding. On the longest flights the airline can halve the €600 if it gets you there within four hours of the original time. Distance is measured from the first departure point to the final destination, so a missed connection counts from the start of the journey, not the leg that failed.

Airlines can still refuse to pay for “extraordinary circumstances”, but the list is now written down in an annex, the airline has to prove the circumstance applied and that it could not have avoided the disruption, and it has to tell you which item on the list it is relying on. Strikes at the airport or air traffic control are on the list. The airline’s own staffing is not.

Claims get a clock

Today the claim process is whatever the airline’s website makes it. From October 2027 it has deadlines on both sides. Within 96 hours of your journey ending, the airline must send you, electronically, a note of your right to compensation and how to claim it. You have nine months from the departure date to submit. The airline must acknowledge at once and, within 30 calendar days, either pay or give a written reason for refusing, with details of how to complain further.

Refunds, where you choose one instead of being rerouted, are automatic and due within seven days. Vouchers are allowed only if you say yes in writing, and any unused balance is refunded when the voucher expires.

Rerouting: three hours, then you can do it yourself

This is the change that will save the most holidays. When a flight is cancelled and you choose to keep travelling, the airline has to offer real alternatives: its own next flight, another airline, another airport, a train. If it has not offered you a comparable rerouting within three hours of your choosing to continue, you may book your own, and the airline must reimburse necessary and reasonable costs up to 400% of the original ticket price, within 14 days.

If you’re stuck overnight, meals, hotel and transfers are on the airline from the scheduled departure time. In extraordinary circumstances the hotel can be capped at three nights, except for children, pregnant passengers, people with reduced mobility and other passengers with specific needs.

The personal item gets a size

Every passenger can carry one personal item into the cabin free. It now has a legal definition: either 40 x 30 x 15 cm at most, or anything that fits under the seat in front. Those are alternatives, so a soft bag that squashes under the seat qualifies even if it is a little bigger.

The wheeled cabin bag is not made free. What changes is pricing: whenever a fare is shown, on the airline’s site or a comparison site, the fare that includes a piece of hand baggage must be displayed by default before you start booking. Airlines may still sell a cheaper no-bag fare, but you have to opt into it rather than discover the bag fee at step four.

The smaller fixes you’ll notice

• No-show clauses are gone. Skipping the outbound leg can no longer be used to cancel your return or charge you for it.
• Name corrections are free, at least once, if requested 48 hours or more before departure.
• Boarding passes: no charge for a printed one, no obligation to use an app or create an account to get a digital one.
• Children under 14 get a free seat next to the adult travelling with them. If no adjacent seats are left, the airline has to try.
• Tarmac delays of two hours at an EU airport mean the aircraft returns to a gate and you may get off, barring safety or immigration reasons.
• Free water and charging at every EU airport with commercial flights, around the clock.
• Musical instruments can come into the cabin within the normal allowance, or on a paid seat beside you.

What to do on the day, under the old rules and the new

The old rules apply until 22 October 2027, and they are not bad. Compensation and the three-hour threshold already exist by court ruling. What the new law adds is deadlines and the self-rerouting right. Either way the method is the same: get the reason for the disruption in writing, keep every receipt, choose rerouting or refund rather than letting the airline choose for you, and claim directly with the airline before paying a third party a third of your money to do it.