British Airways flight delay or cancellation compensation
- IATA code BA, ICAO code BAW, callsign Speedbird, with its main hub at London Heathrow Terminals 3 and 5.
- United Kingdom flag carrier, headquartered at Waterside near Heathrow, with secondary bases at Gatwick and London City.
- Full-service hub-and-spoke carrier, member of IAG and of the Oneworld alliance, with a long-haul network of more than 200 destinations.
British Airways traces its lineage to Imperial Airways and BOAC and was formed in its present shape in 1974. It is the largest airline at Heathrow by slots, where it feeds a dense long-haul network to North America, the Gulf, Africa and Asia, and it also runs an all-business-class service from London City to New York. Since 2011 it has been part of International Airlines Group alongside Iberia, Aer Lingus and Vueling.
Your passenger rights
British Airways is a UK carrier, so UK261 applies to all its departures from British airports and to its flights arriving in the UK, while EC 261/2004 still applies to any BA flight leaving an EU or EEA airport. Long-haul cases matter most here: a transatlantic or Asian flight over 3,500 km that lands 4 hours or more late attracts the top tier of 520 GBP or 600 EUR. If BA moves you from Club World or World Traveller Plus to a lower cabin, you are also owed a refund of 30 to 75 percent of the sector price under Article 10.
Tips for claiming
Claims go through the BA Customer Relations portal, where the flight number and booking reference are enough to open a file; the airline often replies first with Avios or a travel voucher, which you can decline and still ask for cash. Watch the reason given: Heathrow air traffic flow restrictions and third-party ground handling problems are frequently cited, but a technical fault on the aircraft is not an extraordinary circumstance. If BA rebooks you on an American Airlines or Iberia codeshare, the compensation is still owed by the carrier that actually operated the delayed flight, so check the two-letter code on your boarding pass.
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