Knowing your passenger rights is crucial for air travel. Knowing that EU 261 law exists can also be beneficial from a monetary perspective. This law netted my parents €1,200 when they visited us earlier in December.

So what is this law and how did it apply to my parents. I will detail that below:

What is the EU 261 law?

Also referred to as the flight compensation regulation.

This is a regulation in EU law establishing common rules on compensation and assistance to passengers in the event of denied boarding, flight cancellations, or long delays of flights. It requires compensation of €250 to €600 depending on the flight distance for delays over of at least 2 hours, cancellations, or being denied boarding from overbooking. Delays shorter than two hours means no entitlement to any compensation of any kind even if the delay was classified as non-extraordinary. Airlines must provide refreshments and accommodation where appropriate.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_Compensation_Regulation

A specific example with SAS

I figured it is easiest to share an example on how this law comes into play. As mentioned, my parents visited us and were set to fly home with SAS. Their route would take them through Stockholm, home to to Germany. The morning of their departure however SAS had canceled their flight. SAS proactively re-booked them on an itinerary routing them through Copenhagen. However that flight would leave six hours later and get them home six hours later.

A new itinerary

The original itinerary was as follows:

Chicago – Stockholm – Hamburg to leave at 4pm and arrive at 10am the following day

The new itinerary looked like this:

Chicago – Copenhagen – Hamburg to leave at 10pm and arrive at 4:15pm the following day.

As you can see there is a difference of six hours in the actual time that they would be arriving at their final destination. So what does SAS-specific EU 261 claim site say?

SAS EU 261 Interpretation

Here is a link to their full site on EU 261 claims, however an excerpt on when you can claim below:

You can claim compensation from SAS if:

1. SAS is the operating carrier (i.e. not when you have bought your ticket from SAS but fly with another air carrier) and,
2. your flight was cancelled or you were delayed at your final destination more than 3 hours due to circumstances within SAS control and,
3. a) we have failed to offer you an alternative route that allows you to depart no more than two hours before the scheduled time of departure and reach your final destination less than four hours after the scheduled time of arrival, if we have informed you about the cancellation between 7 and 13 days prior to the original flight date or;
   
   b) we have failed to offer you an alternative route that allows you to depart no more than one hour before the scheduled time of departure and to reach your final destination less than two hours after the scheduled time of arrival, if we have informed you about the cancellation less than 7 days prior to the original flight date.

Important distinction of when they are liable

As you can see, they are very specific in terms of when they would be liable. Surely this is to keep cost to a minimum on when to actually compensate passengers. However based on the criteria and the changes to the trip, my parents should be eligible for €600 each. So before they even left, I opened up a claim for them.

Simple and straight-forward process

Submitting a claim is very easy and took me less than 10 minutes. Some of the areas were immediately picked up on based on the booking reference. Below are some screenshots of what is required to provide a claim.

Response from SAS

It states that they will get back to you within 7 days. Sure enough, on Day 7, we got an email stating that the claim was being reviewed. To our surprise, just a day later another email showed up. This time informing us the claim had been approved and the money would be on its way. Two days later, the €1,200 was in my parents bank account. Talk about a painless process.

Summary

It is important to know your rights and then to follow up with the airline as needed. Don’t assume they will do right by you. This time it was super easy and straight-forward. Due to my awareness of EU 261, at the end my parents received more money back then they originally had paid for their flights. I call it a big win all around.