Brussels: EU negotiators agreed on 15 June 2026 to rewrite air passenger rights for the first time in more than two decades, updating Regulation 261/2004 that has set the rules on compensation and care since 2004. The Council and the European Parliament sealed the deal after a 13-year deadlock, and Parliament confirmed the text in July, handing travellers a modernised framework that will apply from mid-2027.

The reform keeps the core promise that defines passenger rights in Europe: cash compensation when flights fall apart. Passengers will still claim between 250 and 600 euros for long delays, and the negotiators preserved the existing three-hour threshold that airlines had lobbied to raise.

European Commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism Apostolos Tzitzikostas welcomed the agreement as the first major overhaul of the framework in twenty years.

We found the right balance: maintaining Europe’s world-leading passenger protection while creating a fair, predictable and workable framework for the aviation sector.

The new rules tighten what passengers are owed and how quickly they learn about it. Carriers must hand travellers clear information about how to claim the moment a disruption hits, and they must simplify the compensation procedure that many flyers have found opaque.

Key elements of the deal include:

• Compensation of 250 to 600 euros for delays beyond three hours, scaled by flight distance.
• Clearer limits on the "extraordinary circumstances" airlines invoke to avoid paying out.
• Stronger guarantees for persons with reduced mobility and for passengers rebooked onto other flights.
• Greater fare transparency so travellers can see the true cost before they book.

The European Parliament set out the improvements after its members approved the compromise, describing sharper rules on assistance, refunds and rerouting. The full detail sits in the institution’s own account of the upgrade to air passenger rights.

The reform lands after years of friction between consumer groups, who wanted stronger protection, and airlines, who argued that generous payouts inflate ticket prices and cancellations. Regulation 261/2004 has anchored European travel for two decades, yet its vague wording forced the Court of Justice to fill gaps case by case, most famously by ruling that long delays deserve the same compensation as cancellations.

Lawmakers say the update finally writes that case law into the statute, replacing courtroom improvisation with plain rules. The Commission had first proposed a revision back in 2013, but the file stalled for years inside the Council as governments split over the delay thresholds and the definition of disruptions beyond an airline’s control.

National authorities will now prepare to enforce the tougher regime, which the Commission maintains alongside a wider body of guidance on the bloc’s air passenger rights. Once the rules take effect in 2027, every one of the hundreds of millions of journeys flown across the single aviation market each year will fall under the revised protections, a shift the Commission frames as proof that Europe still sets the global benchmark for passenger rights.