If your KLM flight was delayed three hours or more, cancelled at short notice, or overbooked, you may be owed a fixed cash payment set by law. Here is where you stand with them specifically.
Check your flightKLM is licensed in the Netherlands, which makes it an EU-based carrier. That matters in one specific way: it means you are covered on KLM flights into the EU from anywhere in the world, not just on flights leaving it. A KLM flight from outside Europe back into the EU is covered; the same route on a non-EU airline would not be.
KLM operates mainly out of Amsterdam Schiphol. Compensation has nothing to do with your fare. The cheapest seat and the most expensive seat on the same delayed flight are owed exactly the same amount.
The amount is set by the straight-line distance from where you departed to your final destination. These are real distances on routes KLM flies:
| Example route | Distance | If delayed 3h+ |
|---|---|---|
| Amsterdam to New York | 5,847 km | €600 |
| Amsterdam to London | 370 km | £220 |
| Amsterdam to Barcelona | 1,241 km | €250 |
A delay pays at three hours or more, measured by when the aircraft door opened at your destination rather than when you took off.
An airline only escapes paying if the cause was an extraordinary circumstance outside its control. Bad weather, air traffic control restrictions, airport strikes, security alerts and bird strikes all qualify, and genuinely do defeat a claim.
These do not qualify, whatever you are told at the desk: a technical or mechanical fault with the aircraft, a strike by KLM's own pilots or cabin crew, a missing crew member, and a knock-on delay because the aircraft arrived late from an earlier flight. Courts have ruled on all four.
If KLM gave you no reason at all, claim anyway. The burden of proof is on the airline. They must prove the cause was extraordinary. You do not have to prove it was not.
Write to them directly first, and keep it to one short email: your booking reference, the flight number and date, how late you arrived at your final destination, and the sentence “I am claiming compensation under Regulation EC 261/2004.” Give them 14 days to respond.
If they refuse or ignore you, escalate free of charge to the national enforcement body in the country you departed from. In the UK that is the Civil Aviation Authority; every EU state has an equivalent regulator. Escalating costs nothing.
You usually have years, not months, to do this. The UK allows 6 years, France and Spain 5, Germany 3, and Italy and the Netherlands 2. An old KLM flight is very often still claimable.
Check your KLM flight