Flight compensation time limit, country by country

United Kingdom: six years — five in Scotland

In England, Wales and Northern Ireland a compensation claim under UK261 is a claim for breach of a statutory duty, and the Limitation Act 1980 gives you six years from the date of the flight. Scotland runs on a five-year prescriptive period instead.

Six years is the most generous window in Europe, which is why "claim up to six years back" appears on so many British sites. It is correct here — and wrong almost everywhere else, so do not carry the number across the Channel.

The deadline country by country

Because the regulation defers to national law, the picture across Europe looks like this. These are the limits in force today:

• United Kingdom: 6 years in England, Wales and Northern Ireland; 5 years in Scotland
• France: 5 years (art. 2224 Code civil)
• Spain: 5 years (art. 1964 Código Civil)
• Germany: 3 years (§ 195 BGB), and the three years only start at the end of the calendar year of the flight
• Netherlands: 2 years, and it is a forfeiture period (art. 8:1835 Dutch Civil Code) that cannot be paused
• Italy: 1 year (art. 2951 codice civile); 18 months if the flight begins or ends outside Europe
• Poland: 1 year (art. 778 Civil Code, confirmed by the Supreme Court in III CZP 111/16)

Which country sets your deadline?

Not your nationality and not where you live, but where the claim is brought. And there you usually have more than one option: an airline can generally be sued at the court of the departure airport, the court of the arrival airport, or where the carrier is established.

That can decide a case. An Italian passenger on an Amsterdam–Rome flight faces one year in Italy but could bring the same claim in the Netherlands, where two years apply. On every claim we check which routes are still open — exactly the kind of detail that turns a refusal around.

What about the nine months you keep reading about?

The revised EU regulation introduces a single nine-month deadline across the Union. It has been adopted, but it does not apply yet: entry into force comes first, then a year of preparation time for Member States and airlines.

So nothing changes for your flight from today or from last year. But once the new rule bites, nine months will be far shorter than most current national limits. One more reason not to let a claim sit.

What the new EU rules actually change →

When does the clock start?

For a delay or denied boarding: on the day of the flight. For a cancellation: on the day you were due to fly, not the day the airline told you.

Germany is the exception that works in your favour — there the three-year period only starts on 31 December of the year of the flight. A German flight from March 2024 therefore stays claimable until the end of 2027.

Not sure whether you are still in time?

Run the free check with your flight number and date. We test straight away whether the window is still open and, if it has closed in your own country, whether another court with jurisdiction can still hear it. It costs nothing and takes two minutes.