Delay at departure or arrival: two clocks, and only one pays

One confusion costs passengers dearly, and it comes down to something simple: the European regulation measures the delay at two different moments, depending on which right you are talking about. One is counted at departure, the other at arrival. And these two figures almost never have the same value.

Knowing which one counts is the difference between walking away with a good meal and walking away with several hundred euros.

Two clocks, two separate rights

The regulation works on two planes people mix up all the time.

The departure delay triggers care. From 2 hours on short flights, 3 hours on medium ones, 4 hours on long ones, which covers most Europe-Africa flights, the airline must provide meals, drinks and communications, then a hotel if you only leave the next day. That is Article 6.

The arrival delay triggers the flat compensation, 250, 400 or 600 euros. The threshold is 3 hours, but measured at arrival at your final destination, not at take-off.

The same flight can therefore cross one clock and not the other. Departed 3 hours late but arrived 2h40 late, a recovery of about twenty minutes in the air is enough to bring you under the threshold: meals due, compensation not due. Departed on time and arrived 3h30 late after a diversion, it is the reverse. The only question that decides your compensation is the time you actually set foot at your destination.

Why the departure delay often shrinks before arrival

This is no accident, and any former crew member will tell you: the margin is built into the schedule from the start.

Airlines publish a cautious block time, calculated for an unfavourable headwind. A trip that actually takes one hour ten may be scheduled at one hour thirty. So there is, before you even take off, some twenty minutes of delay already recoverable on paper.

On top of that, a known operational practice: when a flight runs late, the crew is usually cleared to fly a little faster, accepting higher fuel burn, precisely to stop the delay spreading to the aircraft's later flights. With favourable winds, part of the delay melts away in the air.

That is why a delay announced at departure is never a promise of compensation. You have to wait for arrival to know.

And why it can, instead, grow in the air

The reverse happens too, and it is just as real.

A plane that left on time can be placed in a holding pattern above the destination airport, circling for a landing slot, when traffic is heavy or the weather poor. It may also be diverted to another airport. In these cases the delay is created entirely in the air, with nothing abnormal about the departure.

A passenger who then thinks "we left on time, I am owed nothing" is mistaken. It is the arrival that counts, and the compensation may be fully due.

Article 6 never mentions money

Here is the point almost no site explains, and it throws anyone who opens the regulation.

Article 6, the very one that deals with delays, mentions no compensation. It only opens the care of Article 9, meals and hotel, and reimbursement of the ticket after 5 hours of delay, under Article 8. Not a single flat euro.

The right to 250, 400 or 600 euros is therefore not where common sense would look for it. It flows from a Court of Justice ruling, the Sturgeon judgment, which held that a delay of 3 hours or more at arrival must open the same compensation as a cancellation (CJEU, Sturgeon, 19 November 2009, C-402/07).

Two further points from the Court are worth money. The arrival time that counts is not when the wheels touch the runway, but when a door of the plane opens, which sometimes adds the decisive minutes (CJEU, Germanwings, 4 September 2014, C-452/13). And this delay is measured at your final destination, not at a connecting airport: a flight that departs on time but makes you miss a connection and arrive more than 3 hours late opens the right (CJEU, Folkerts, 26 February 2013, C-11/11).

Stuck on the tarmac: that is delay, not flight

Sometimes a plane sits on the ground, doors closed, for hours, because of weather or congested traffic between two destinations.

Operationally, once the doors are shut, the plane is often considered to have "left". That is not true under the regulation. As long as the aircraft has not taken off, the flight has not departed, and time spent on the tarmac is delay.

During that wait, the crew can serve something to drink and nibble, but not run the normal service: the trolleys stay stowed, because they would block the aisles in case of an emergency evacuation on the ground. Care on board is therefore, in practice, reduced. Your rights are not: they are assessed exactly as at the terminal.

When a delay tips into a cancellation

A long delay is not always a delay to the end. Some situations tip it into a cancellation, and the label changes everything: a cancellation opens compensation with no duration condition, whereas a delay must reach 3 hours at arrival.

Three cases push towards cancellation. A faulty part that cannot be repaired before the next day. The plain absence of a spare part. And the crew that, from waiting too long, reaches its duty-time limits and can no longer legally operate the flight, with no standby crew available on the spot.

These three share a decisive feature: they are technical or organisational problems of the airline. And a technical fault is, in principle, part of a carrier's normal activity, not an extraordinary circumstance (CJEU, Wallentin-Hermann, 22 December 2008, C-549/07, and van der Lans, 17 September 2015, C-257/14). A cancellation for want of a spare part is therefore, most often, compensable.

Article 14: the law honoured in form, hollowed out in substance

The regulation obliges the airline to inform you of your rights, in Article 14. But look at what it really imposes. It must display at the desk a notice inviting you, in case of a delay of at least two hours, to ask for the text setting out your rights. For a mere delay, the law does not require handing you anything. It requires a sign telling you to go and claim them yourself.

In practice, at the gate, nobody says the word "rights". And when written information does arrive, often by email after the flight, it is worded so neutrally that no one recognises a quantified entitlement. Remember one thing: having received that email waived nothing. If your flight meets the conditions, your right stands, whether the airline told you clearly or not.

How Robin des Airs helps

The first difficulty of a delay claim is not legal, it is knowing which clock to read. We reconstruct your flight: real departure time, real arrival time at your final destination, reason invoked. That determines whether you fall under simple care, flat compensation, or both.

We do not stop at what the airline chose to write in its email. We check the facts, and we claim what is truly owed. No upfront fee. If we recover nothing, you pay nothing.

Related: Compensation amounts: €250, €400, €600, EC 261/2004 regulation summary.