Extraordinary Circumstances: What Counts and What Doesn't

The legal test

Article 5(3) of EU261 releases an airline from compensation only if it can prove that the cancellation or long delay was caused by extraordinary circumstances which could not have been avoided even if all reasonable measures had been taken. That is two hurdles, not one. The event must be (a) outside the airline's normal activity and beyond its actual control, and (b) the airline must have done everything reasonable to prevent the disruption or limit its length. The burden of proof sits with the airline.

Generally accepted as extraordinary

Generally rejected as extraordinary

The second hurdle: reasonable measures

Even when the event is extraordinary, the airline must show it tried to limit the damage. In practice courts ask: Was there a reserve aircraft or crew available? Could passengers have been re-routed on another carrier sooner? Did the airline build a realistic buffer into its schedule? An airline that cancels a flight because of a 30-minute ATC delay and then does nothing for 24 hours has not taken reasonable measures.

Care is owed regardless

Extraordinary circumstances only cancel the fixed compensation. The right to meals, hotel accommodation, refund or re-routing (Articles 8 and 9) applies to every cancellation and long delay, whatever the cause — including volcanic ash (McDonagh v Ryanair, 2013, where the Court refused to cap the airline's costs).

How to challenge an "extraordinary circumstances" refusal

1. Ask the airline to name the specific circumstance and the time it applied to your flight.
2. Check whether other flights from the same airport operated normally at the same time — public flight-tracking data is usually enough.
3. Ask what reasonable measures were taken (reserve aircraft, re-routing attempts).
4. If the reply is generic, escalate. Our legal team has the operational data sources to test these claims — check your flight for free.

Weather: The Most Abused Category

Weather is a genuine extraordinary circumstance — when it is genuinely the cause. The test is specific: the conditions must have made this flight impossible or unsafe at the scheduled time, not merely made the day difficult. Courts look at METAR reports for the departure and arrival airports around the scheduled time, at whether other flights operated, and at what the airline did next. Fog that lifted at 08:00 does not excuse a cancellation announced at 14:00; a snowstorm that closed the runway does. And even genuine weather does not excuse a delay that was extended by the airline's own decisions — a crew that ran out of hours because the airline had no standby, for instance.

Air Traffic Control

ATC restrictions — slot delays, flow-management regulations, airspace closures, controller strikes — are the classic extraordinary circumstance and are documented in Eurocontrol's systems with a time and a reason. The airline should be able to produce the regulation reference. Two caveats: an ATC delay of 30 minutes does not explain a 3-hour delay, and the airline must still minimise the consequences (re-routing, standby crew). Many "ATC" rejections dissolve when the flight's actual slot history is examined.

Staff Illness, Death and Unruly Passengers

A pilot or crew member falling ill — even suddenly, even the captain — is part of the ordinary risk of running an airline; the UK Supreme Court's Lipton v BA Cityflyer (2024) and the CJEU's TAP (C-156/22, 2023, death of a co-pilot) both refused to treat it as extraordinary. An unruly passenger who forces a diversion mid-flight can be extraordinary; one who could have been removed before departure is not (LE v TAP, C-74/19).

Hidden Manufacturing Defects and Manufacturer Bulletins

The one technical exception is a hidden defect affecting a whole fleet, revealed by the manufacturer or an aviation authority — the Boeing 737 MAX grounding of 2019 and the Pratt & Whitney GTF engine inspections of 2023–2024 are the recent examples. Airlines have relied on the GTF issue to refuse claims for A320neo cancellations; whether a specific cancellation months after the bulletin, with plenty of planning time, is still "unavoidable" is being litigated across Europe. We assess these case by case.

Burden of Proof in Practice

The passenger has to prove only the booking, the check-in and the delay. Everything about the cause is for the airline to prove, with documents. A passenger who simply asks for the evidence has done all that is required; if the airline cannot or will not produce it, courts award compensation.

How Airlines Prove — or Fail to Prove — a Circumstance

In court, an airline claiming extraordinary circumstances is expected to produce contemporaneous records: the reason code filed in its operations system, the ATC regulation message from Eurocontrol's Network Manager, METAR/TAF weather reports, NOTAMs for runway closures, or a strike notice from a third-party organisation. It must also show what it did to avoid the consequences — which reserve aircraft or crew were available, which alternative flights were offered. Airlines that cannot produce these records lose. The practical lesson for passengers: never accept a bare assertion, and treat a refusal to provide evidence as a sign the evidence would not help the airline.

Reasonable Measures: What Courts Expect

Even a genuine extraordinary event does not end the analysis. The airline must show that it took all reasonable measures — that it deployed the resources a reasonable airline would keep in reserve, and that it re-routed passengers as quickly as possible. A cancellation due to a two-hour ATC restriction, followed by 36 hours without a replacement flight while competitors had seats, fails this test. Courts have held that airlines must consider re-routing on other carriers and via other airports, not just their own next departure.