If your flight from Heathrow is cancelled, UK law gives you two things the airline cannot take away: a choice between a full refund and a seat on another flight, and food, drink and a hotel until it can fly you. Cash compensation is a separate matter, it depends on the cause, and in most of the cases that make the news you will not get it.
The rules are set out by the Civil Aviation Authority and they apply to any flight departing from a UK airport, on any airline, as well as to flights arriving in the UK on a UK or EU airline. Departing Heathrow, you are covered whoever you are flying with. Everything below comes from the CAA's own guidance, which is the document to quote at a desk.
The single most useful thing to know is the order in which to do things, because the first twenty minutes decide whether you spend the night in a hotel or in a queue.
What the airline owes you when it cancels
- Your choice
- A refund of every unused part of the ticket, or an alternative flight, at a time that suits you and not only the next one they have
- Care while you wait
- Reasonable food and drink, a means of communicating, a hotel if you are rerouted the next day, and transport to and from it
- For how long
- Until it can fly you to your destination, however long that takes and whatever caused the cancellation
- Compensation
- £220, £350 or £520 per person by distance, but only with less than 14 days' notice and only where the airline was at fault
- Not compensation
- Extreme weather, air traffic control or airport staff strikes and other "extraordinary circumstances"
- Source
- UK Civil Aviation Authority, cancellations guidance, read September 2026
The first twenty minutes, in order
- Get in two queues at once. Join the physical queue at the airline's desk and, while standing in it, open the airline's app and its telephone line. Whichever answers first is the one you use. Rebooking by app during major disruption is routinely faster than the desk.
- Rebook before you argue. Seats on the alternative flights are finite and compensation is not. Secure the seat, then deal with money afterwards, in writing.
- Say out loud what you want. The CAA is explicit that it is your choice whether to fly as soon as possible or at a later date, and that if another airline is going significantly sooner, or another kind of transport is available, you may have the right to be booked on to that instead. Ask for it by name.
- Ask for the care in the same conversation. Vouchers and a hotel are not a favour and not a goodwill gesture. If staff cannot arrange them, the CAA's position is that you may organise reasonable care yourself and claim it back.
- Start keeping receipts from this moment. Every taxi, meal and hotel night. Photograph the departure board showing the cancellation as well.
- Decide whether to leave the airport. If the next flight is tomorrow, a hotel near the airport beats a terminal bench, and our page on staying near Heathrow covers what is within reach.
Do not walk away from Heathrow without a written record of what the airline agreed. An email or an app screenshot of the rebooking, and a note of the staff member's name, are worth more later than any conversation at a desk. Complaints are decided on paper.
Photo: DiscoA340 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · resized
Refund or a new flight: choose deliberately
These are the two options and the airline must offer both. A refund covers all unused parts of the ticket, including the return leg if the outbound is cancelled and you decide not to travel at all. If you are a transfer passenger who has already flown part of the journey, you are also entitled to a flight back to where you started.
Most people take the alternative flight, and most of the time that is right. Take the refund instead when the trip no longer works: a three-day weekend that has lost its first day, a connection you can no longer make, a conference that will be over. The refund is money back for the flight only, not for the hotel you are not going to use, which is where travel insurance and its disruption cover comes in.
One trap worth knowing: if you buy a replacement ticket yourself on a different airline without going through the cancellation process, you have chosen to do that, and the original airline's duty to reroute you does not become a duty to reimburse your new ticket. Ask them to reroute you first, and get the refusal recorded.
Care and assistance is the right nobody claims
This is the part of the law with the least fine print. Whatever caused the cancellation, the airline must provide a reasonable amount of food and drink, a means of communicating, accommodation if you are rerouted the following day, and transport to and from that accommodation. The duty runs until it flies you to your destination.
Sometimes there are more stranded passengers than staff, and nothing gets arranged. The CAA's guidance says that in its view you may then arrange reasonable care yourself and claim the cost back. Two words are doing the work there: reasonable, and receipts. The CAA warns that airlines are unlikely to reimburse luxury hotels or alcohol, and some publish a nightly figure they will accept. Book the ordinary airport hotel, not the suite.
There is no ceiling on how long the duty lasts, which is the point people miss during a multi-day shutdown. Day three of a closure carries the same entitlement as day one.
Compensation: the amounts, and why you usually will not get them
Compensation is fixed by distance and is paid per person, children included. It applies only if you were given less than 14 days' notice of the cancellation, and only if the cancellation was the airline's fault.
| Flight distance | Late at final destination | Compensation per person |
|---|---|---|
| Under 1,500 km | Two hours or more | £220 |
| 1,500 to 3,500 km | Three hours or more | £350 |
| Over 3,500 km | Four hours or more | £520 |
| Over 3,500 km | Less than four hours | £260 |
Those are the figures for less than seven days' notice. Between seven and 14 days' notice the halved amounts of £110, £175 and £260 can apply depending on how the replacement flight's timings compare with the original. And with less than seven days' notice, if your new flight leaves no more than an hour early and lands less than two hours late, there is no compensation at all.
Now the reason the table so rarely pays out. Cancellations caused by extreme weather, by air traffic control or airport staff strikes, or by other extraordinary circumstances are excluded. September 2026 gave a clean example: after the National Air Traffic Services flight-planning system failed on Tuesday 8 September and hundreds of UK flights were cancelled, the CAA said the following day that the outage and its knock-on effects were likely to count as extraordinary circumstances, so passengers should be looked after but were unlikely to be entitled to compensation. The Government has asked the CAA to review what happened.
Read that outcome carefully, because it is the usual one. Care: yes. Refund or rerouting: yes. Cash: no. Snow is the same, as our page on what happens in London when it snows explains, and so is a strike, which is covered in visiting during a strike.
Which terminal, and where the desk actually is
Heathrow is five terminals in two places, and a cancelled flight sometimes means going to a different one from the one on your boarding pass. Terminal 5 is British Airways and its partners, Terminals 2 and 3 sit together in the central area, and Terminal 4 is on the south side of the runways: our guide to the Heathrow terminals has the layout and the free inter-terminal transport.
Two things about the building itself. Heathrow publishes an airline contact directory and a passenger updates page on its own website, and both are more useful at 6am than the switchboard. And once you have checked in and dropped a bag, that bag belongs to a process, not to you: if you are rerouted to another day, ask explicitly what happens to it before you leave the terminal.
If the airline is rebooking you from a different London airport, budget properly for the transfer. Heathrow to Gatwick is not a short hop, and we have costed it in transferring between Heathrow and Gatwick.
Going back into London for the night
If the next flight is tomorrow and the airline has not put you in a hotel, you have two sensible options: an airport hotel, or back into town. The Elizabeth line and the Piccadilly line both run into central London from Terminals 2 and 3 and Terminal 5, and the choice between the fast option and the cheap one is set out in Heathrow Express or the Elizabeth line. Neither runs all night.
With a full set of luggage and a day to kill, the left luggage desks at the main stations are the difference between a wasted day and a useful one; opening hours and prices are in left luggage at London's stations. If you have a whole day rather than a night, what to do with a long layover at Heathrow is written for exactly this.
Check your ETA or visa before you plan a night in a London hotel. Leaving the airport means entering the United Kingdom. If you were only transiting and have not got the permission described in our page on UK entry requirements, an airport hotel inside the terminal complex is the safer answer.
If the airline says no
Claim in writing to the airline first, with the booking reference, the flight number, the date, what you are claiming and the receipts attached. Keep it factual and short. If that claim is rejected, the CAA's guidance sets out the next steps: many airlines belong to an approved alternative dispute resolution body, which will look at the case for you; where an airline does not belong to one, the CAA says it can help argue a valid claim; and beyond that lies the small claims court.
Two deadlines matter and neither is on the airline's website. The time limit for suing in England and Wales is six years, so there is no need to panic. But a claim made months later without receipts is a claim you will lose, which brings it back to the photographs you took in the terminal. The general shape of consumer complaints here is in how to complain in Britain.
If you booked a package holiday rather than a flight alone, the organiser carries duties of its own on top of these, and an ATOL certificate protects the money. That is a different set of rules and the organiser is the one to write to.
Frequently asked questions
Does the airline have to pay for my hotel if my flight from Heathrow is cancelled?
Yes, if you are rerouted the following day. The Civil Aviation Authority says the airline must provide accommodation and transport to and from it, regardless of what caused the cancellation. If staff cannot arrange it, the CAA's view is that you may book reasonable accommodation yourself and claim the cost back with receipts.
How much compensation do I get for a cancelled flight from the UK?
£220 for flights under 1,500 km, £350 for 1,500 to 3,500 km and £520 for flights over 3,500 km, per person, where you had less than 14 days' notice and the airline was at fault. Smaller amounts apply in some cases, and nothing is due for extraordinary circumstances.
Can I insist on being put on another airline's flight?
You can ask, and the CAA says that if another airline is flying to your destination significantly sooner, or another suitable form of transport is available, you may have the right to be booked on to it. It is a discussion with your airline rather than an automatic entitlement, so put the request in writing.
Is a strike an extraordinary circumstance?
A strike by air traffic control or airport staff is treated as extraordinary, so no compensation is due, although care and rerouting still are. Strikes by the airline's own staff are treated differently, and that distinction is where most disputed claims live.
What if my flight is only delayed rather than cancelled?
Care and assistance start after two, three or four hours depending on the distance, and compensation can become payable if you reach your destination three or more hours late. The Civil Aviation Authority publishes the delay thresholds separately from the cancellation rules.
Sources
- UK Civil Aviation Authority - Cancellations: your entitlements and compensation (checked September 2026)
- UK Civil Aviation Authority - Delays: your rights when a flight is delayed (checked September 2026)
- UK Civil Aviation Authority - What to do if your claim is rejected (checked September 2026)
- UK Civil Aviation Authority - Statement on passenger compensation following the NATS disruption on 8 September, published 9 September 2026 (checked September 2026)
- Heathrow Airport - airline contact information (checked September 2026)
- Heathrow Airport - passenger updates (checked September 2026)
- UK Civil Aviation Authority - ATOL protection for package holidays (checked September 2026)