On this page 14
- Why BA is covered in both directions
- The amounts, including the tier most checkers get wrong
- Arrival means doors open
- Claiming
- What BA refuses, and what survives
- Downgrades: the claim BA passengers most often miss
- Care while you wait, and what BA owes on a long-haul disruption
- Cancellations and your re-routing rights
- Escalating a refusal
- A note on codeshares
- Connecting through Heathrow, and why it usually helps you
- If you were bumped from an oversold flight
- Families, children and infants
- What a "goodwill" offer is actually worth
British Airways holds a UK operating licence, and that single fact is worth more to a transatlantic passenger than anything else on this page. It means BA is covered flying into the UK from anywhere in the world, where an American, Emirati or Singaporean carrier on the identical route would owe you nothing at all for the same delay.
The short version
BA is covered both leaving the UK and arriving into it from anywhere, on every route it flies. Long-haul delays pay £520, but only beyond four hours late — a three-to-four hour arrival pays £260. Claim through BA's own form, expect technical-fault refusals to fold, and use the free ADR route if they dig in.
Why BA is covered in both directions
UK261 reaches a flight two ways: anything departing a UK airport, whoever operates it, and anything arriving in the UK from outside on a UK or EU airline. BA satisfies the second limb on its entire long-haul network.
Put that next to the alternative. New York to London on BA, six hours late, is a £520 claim. The same route, same delay, on a US carrier is nothing — the flight leaves the US, so no European rule attaches to the departure, and the carrier is not European, so no rule attaches to the arrival either. For anyone who flies transatlantic regularly and cares about disruption, the airline's nationality is a financial decision, not just a service preference.
BA flights departing EU airports — and it flies plenty, from Barcelona, Milan, Amsterdam and so on — fall under EU261 instead, in euros. Both may technically reach a London-to-Paris flight; you claim under one.
The amounts, including the tier most checkers get wrong
| Distance to final destination | Arrived 3–4h late | Arrived 4h+ late |
|---|---|---|
| Under 1,500 km | £220 | £220 |
| 1,500–3,500 km | £350 | £350 |
| Over 3,500 km | £260 | £520 |
That bottom-left cell is the one almost every online checker omits. On a long-haul flight the award is halved where you arrived between three and four hours late. The full £520 needs an arrival more than four hours behind schedule. Since most of BA's claimable volume is long-haul, this distinction decides a lot of BA claims, and it cuts both ways: if a checker promised you £520 for a three-and-a-half hour arrival, it was wrong, and if BA offers you £260 for a five-hour arrival, so are they.
Measure carefully. Four hours and five minutes is £520; three hours and fifty-five minutes is £260. On a long-haul arrival the taxi to stand can easily span that line, which is why the doors-open time matters so much here.
Arrival means doors open
The regulation measures lateness by when passengers can actually leave the aircraft. At Heathrow in particular, a long taxi plus a wait for a stand can add twenty-five minutes to a landing time. Flight trackers publish touchdown. The two numbers are not the same and BA will quote whichever helps it.
If you are anywhere near a threshold — three hours or four — write down the doors-open time while you are still on the aircraft. How to evidence an arrival time covers what works.
Claiming
BA has a dedicated online claim form, and it is the right route: it generates a case reference, and it goes to the team that handles these rather than to general customer relations. You will need the booking reference, the operating flight number, scheduled and actual arrival, and all passenger names.
State the band and the figure. "Arrival was 4h35m late at Heathrow from Singapore, a journey of over 3,500 km, so the Article 7 amount is £520 per passenger for two passengers, £1,040 total" is a different kind of claim from "my flight was late, please help". It signals you know what the reduction tier is and that a £260 offer will not be accepted quietly.
Claim everyone on the booking at once, and ask for a bank transfer rather than Avios or a travel voucher. BA will sometimes offer Avios, often at a headline number that sounds generous; valued realistically it is usually worth less than the cash, and it is not what the regulation entitles you to.
What BA refuses, and what survives
Technical faults
The most common refusal and the weakest. A technical problem revealed in maintenance or in normal operation is inherent in running an airline and is not an extraordinary circumstance. If your refusal letter mentions an aircraft defect, an unserviceable part or "operational reasons", that is usually a claim worth pressing. Technical faults in detail.
Air traffic control and weather
Generally genuine. Worth checking whether the restriction actually applied to your flight, and whether neighbouring departures went on time.
Knock-on delays from an inbound aircraft
Very common on long-haul, where one aircraft does one rotation a day. It only assists BA if the original cause was extraordinary and it could not reasonably have recovered the schedule — with a large fleet and a hub at Heathrow, the "no reasonable measures available" argument is harder for BA to make than for a small carrier with one spare aircraft.
Strikes
Depends entirely whose. Air traffic control strikes are outside BA's control. A strike by BA's own pilots or cabin crew is not extraordinary — the Court of Justice has treated a carrier's own industrial action as part of the normal exercise of its business. Which strikes count.
Downgrades: the claim BA passengers most often miss
If you paid for Club World or First and were flown in a lower cabin, that is not a delay claim and it is not covered by the Article 7 bands at all. It is a separate right to reimbursement of a proportion of the ticket price for the affected flight — a meaningful sum on a long-haul premium fare, and far more than any delay compensation would have been.
BA will frequently offer Avios or a goodwill gesture instead. The statutory remedy is a percentage of the fare, in money. Work out which is larger before accepting anything. How downgrade reimbursement is calculated.
Care while you wait, and what BA owes on a long-haul disruption
Food and drink proportionate to the delay, and a hotel plus transport if you are kept overnight. On long-haul this is where the real money is: a night in a London or Singapore airport hotel plus transfers dwarfs a short-haul compensation payment. The duty applies even where compensation does not, so a genuine weather cancellation still has to be accommodated.
BA is generally better than low-cost carriers at providing this proactively, but during mass disruption its hotel contracts run out like everyone else's and you will be told to book your own. Do so, keep it reasonable, keep receipts, and claim it as a separate expenses line. What counts as reasonable.
Cancellations and your re-routing rights
Fourteen days' notice or more removes compensation. Inside that, it is due unless the re-route offered sat within the regulation's timing exceptions.
Independently, you choose between a refund and re-routing at the earliest opportunity under comparable conditions. "Earliest opportunity" is the phrase to use. BA has a large network and interline agreements with many carriers, so it can usually put you on someone else's metal when its own next seat is days away — but it will rarely volunteer to. Ask in writing, and if it refuses and you buy a reasonable replacement yourself, that cost is recoverable.
Escalating a refusal
BA is signed up to an alternative dispute resolution scheme. ADR is free, binding on the airline, and removes the court step that stops most people pursuing a refusal themselves. It is slow — expect a couple of months — but it costs nothing and it is the reason using a claim company for a refused BA claim is usually poor value.
For a clear-cut claim where you would rather not wait, a small court claim is quick to file and BA settles a meaningful share before any hearing. You have six years in England and Wales, so there is no urgency unless the claim is genuinely old. Filing a small claim.
A note on codeshares
A flight sold as BA and operated by a partner is a claim against the operating carrier, not against BA. A BA-numbered flight actually flown by American Airlines from the United States is an American Airlines flight for these purposes, which means no European rule covers it on the outbound leg. Check the small print on your boarding pass: "operated by" is the line that decides who you are claiming against and whether you have a claim at all. Codeshares and who actually pays.
Connecting through Heathrow, and why it usually helps you
A great deal of BA's network exists to feed connections through Heathrow, and the regulation treats a connecting itinerary generously as long as it was one booking.
Your delay is measured by how late you reached your final destination, not by how late the first leg was. So a 50-minute delay out of Manchester that causes you to miss a Heathrow connection to Cape Town, leaving you to travel the following day, is not a 50-minute problem. It is a delay of however many hours later you landed in Cape Town — comfortably in the long-haul band, and comfortably over four hours, which puts it at the full £520 rather than £260.
The distance band is measured end to end as well, from your original departure airport to your final destination, not leg by leg. Manchester to Cape Town is well over 3,500 km however the journey was broken up, so the short domestic leg that actually went wrong does not drag the claim down into the £220 band.
The reverse is the trap. Book the Manchester–Heathrow leg on one ticket and the Heathrow–Cape Town leg on another, and you have two journeys. The first airline delivered you to Heathrow as contracted; missing your own onward flight is legally your problem, with no compensation and no duty to rebook. Self-connecting at Heathrow saves money on the fare and removes every protection that matters. The full explanation is here.
If you were bumped from an oversold flight
Denied boarding pays the full band amount with no delay threshold whatsoever — £520 on a long-haul route even if BA gets you away two hours later on the next departure. It is the best-compensated disruption in the regulation and the easiest to give away by accident.
When a flight is oversold, BA asks for volunteers first, usually offering a travel voucher and a later seat. Accepting that is a negotiated deal and it ends your statutory claim. If nobody volunteers and you are denied boarding involuntarily, the statutory amount applies. So on a long-haul departure, do not accept a £300 voucher before establishing that the involuntary payment would be £520 in cash plus a re-route plus meals.
You need to have held a confirmed reservation and presented for check-in within the deadline. Keep evidence that you did — a timestamped bag drop or mobile boarding pass — because the simplest way to defeat a denied-boarding claim is to recharacterise it as a passenger who turned up late. Denied boarding in full.
Families, children and infants
Compensation is per passenger, and a child on their own seat and ticket is a passenger. A family of four delayed five hours arriving from Singapore is £2,080, not £520. This is routinely under-claimed because people submit one claim for "our flight" rather than naming everyone.
Infants travelling on a lap without their own seat are the grey area, and it turns on whether a fare was paid for carriage. Where an infant fare was charged, claim for them too and let BA argue otherwise; where the infant travelled genuinely free, expect that one to be refused. Either way, name every person on the booking in the claim.
What a "goodwill" offer is actually worth
BA frequently responds to a valid claim with a goodwill gesture rather than the statutory amount — Avios, a discount code, or a cash sum below the band figure. Three things to hold in mind.
First, a goodwill offer is an admission that something went wrong, which is useful context if you later escalate. Second, accepting it may be framed as full and final settlement of the claim, so read what you are agreeing to before clicking accept. Third, convert everything to money before comparing: Avios have a real per-point value that is well below the headline figures airlines imply, and a discount code conditional on future spending is not compensation at all.
If the offer is below the band amount and the cause was within BA's control, decline it in writing, restate the Article 7 figure, and say you will escalate. That alone resolves a good proportion of underpayments.
Work out your own figure
Four regimes checked at once, no sign-up, and it shows you the article the number comes from.