Your Rights When a Flight Is Delayed or Cancelled: What US Airlines Owe You

A delayed or cancelled flight is the most common thing that goes wrong on a trip, and the rules on what the airline owes you are clearer than they used to be. Since the Department of Transportation’s refund rule took effect in late 2024, a US airline that cancels or badly changes your flight owes you cash, not a voucher, without being asked. What it does not owe you, unless it promised to, is a hotel, a meal or money for your time. This page sets out the rule as it stands on transportation.gov today, then the steps to take at the gate, then what travel insurance adds.

The short version

Checked 14 September 2026 on transportation.gov (Refunds page updated 7 November 2025; Airline Cancellation and Delay Dashboard updated 11 September 2025). The rule covers flights to, from and within the United States on any airline.

1. When you are owed a refund, and when you are not

The word that matters is choose. The refund is yours when the airline cancels or significantly changes the flight and you decide not to travel on what it offers instead. If you accept the rebooking, or you get on the late flight, the refund is gone; what you have instead is whatever the airline’s own plan promises for delays it caused. A “significant change” is any one of these, in DOT’s words:

• You would depart 3 hours or more earlier (6 on an international itinerary) than booked.
• You would arrive 3 hours or more later (6 international) than booked.
• You would leave from or land at a different airport.
• You would have more connections than you booked.
• You are moved to a lower class of seat. (If you fly anyway, the airline owes the fare difference.)
• For a traveler with a disability, a different connecting airport or a substitute aircraft without the accessibility feature you need.

Not covered: you bought a non-refundable ticket and changed your plans, you arrived late, or the flight ran on time and the service was bad. A weather cancellation still earns the refund; the reason for a cancellation does not matter, only that the airline cancelled it.

2. How the refund arrives

• Automatic. If you turn down the airline’s offer, or ignore it and do not fly, the airline must refund you without a claim form. It must also tell you, in the same message, that you are entitled to a refund.
• Cash, to the card you paid with. Within 7 business days for a card, 20 days for cash or check.
• Everything you paid. Bag fees, seat fees and other extras come back with the fare.
• Vouchers are optional. An airline may offer credit or miles instead, but it must say you can have cash, and any voucher you accept must be good for at least five years.
• Booked through an agency? Whoever shows on your card statement (the airline or the agency) owes the fare refund. Fees for bags and extras always come from the airline.
• Deadlines cut both ways. The airline can set a deadline to accept a rebooking. If you want the new flight, say so before it lapses.

3. What the airline owes for the wait: only what it promised

US law does not require an airline to pay for meals, hotels or your time. What DOT did instead was publish each large airline’s written promises for delays and cancellations it caused (crew, maintenance, cleaning, fueling; not weather or air traffic control) on the Airline Cancellation and Delay Dashboard, and it holds them to those promises. The large US airlines are on it: Alaska, Allegiant, American, Delta, Frontier, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Southwest and United, with their regional partners. Before you argue at the counter, open the dashboard, pick your airline, and read what it committed to: a meal after a 3-hour delay, a hotel and ground transport for an overnight, rebooking on a partner airline, and so on. Then ask for exactly that, by name.

When the airline says the delay was outside its control and you doubt it, look at the departure board. If other airlines are leaving on time in the same weather, photograph the board and the weather app; that is your evidence for a DOT complaint later.

4. Flying from Europe or the UK: a different, stronger rule

A flight that departs from an EU airport (any airline), or arrives in the EU on an EU airline, falls under the EU’s passenger rights regulation, and the UK kept a matching version after Brexit. Those rules go further than the US rule: for a cancellation with short notice or an arrival delay of 3 hours or more that was the airline’s fault, you can claim fixed compensation on top of the refund or rebooking, set by flight distance (in the EU, €250 to €600; in the UK, £220 to £520), plus meals and a hotel while you wait. Weather, strikes by air traffic control and similar events are excluded. So a delayed Paris to Boston flight on Delta is covered; the Boston to Paris leg is not. Ask the airline for the claim form, and if it stalls, the national enforcement body in the country you departed from takes complaints.

5. What to do at the gate, in order

1. Open the airline’s app. It shows the change first, and it usually lets you rebook yourself before the line at the desk moves.
2. Screenshot every notice: the delay, the new time, the offer. Keep the boarding pass.
3. Decide fast: take the rebooking, or decline it and take the refund. If you decline, the refund is automatic; you do not have to file anything.
4. If you are waiting, ask for what the dashboard says your airline promised: a meal, a hotel, a partner-airline seat. Name it.
5. Pay for what you need and keep every receipt, including the ones the airline will not cover. Those are what a travel insurance claim is paid against.
6. If the refund does not arrive in the time above, or the airline will not honor its plan, file a complaint with DOT and, for a refund, dispute the charge with your card issuer.

What travel insurance adds

The airline’s duty ends at the fare. Everything the delay costs you beyond it is where a travel insurance plan works, and it pays whether or not the delay was the airline’s fault.

• Travel delay pays for meals, a hotel and local transport once the delay passes the plan’s waiting period (3 to 12 hours on most plans, up to 24 on a few), up to a daily and total limit ($500 to $2,500 on the plans we compare), for a cause the policy names: carrier delay, weather, a strike, a lost passport, and so on. Receipts required.
• Missed connection pays to catch up with a cruise or tour you missed because of a covered delay.
• Trip interruption pays the unused, prepaid part of the trip and the fare home when a covered reason cuts the trip short, which a cancellation that strands you for a day can be.
• Trip cancellation pays back the whole trip if the airline’s cancellation means the trip cannot happen at all and no rebooking works, on most plans only when the carrier is stopped for a set number of hours by weather or a mechanical fault. The airline refund covers the fare; the plan covers the hotel, the tour and the cruise you now cannot reach.

The two work together: take the airline’s refund for the fare, then claim the rest. For the delay benefit by plan, and the waiting periods that decide most of these claims, see does travel insurance cover flight delays; for what a plan refunds when a trip is called off, the trip cancellation guide; and for how to file so the claim is paid, the claims guide.

The US rules on this page are from transportation.gov: the Refunds page (last updated 7 November 2025) and the Airline Cancellation and Delay Dashboard (last updated 11 September 2025), read on 14 September 2026. EU and UK figures are the published compensation bands under Regulation 261/2004 and the UK’s retained version; the airline’s claim form and the national enforcement body govern. Plan delay limits are from the plans on the CoverTrip comparison.