Award tickets are covered. The regulation says so in writing, in the same article the airline quotes at you.
Check your flightA seat that cost you 9,000 Avios and £35 in taxes is worth the same compensation as the seat next to it that somebody paid £900 for. On a long haul delay that is €600 on a booking you valued at under a hundred.
Which is why this is the claim airlines push back on hardest, and the one most people abandon after the first rejection email.
Every rejection of an award ticket claim rests on the same provision. Article 3(3) of Regulation 261/2004 opens by excluding passengers travelling free of charge, or on a reduced fare that is not available directly or indirectly to the public.
Agents quote that, call your booking free, and close the file. Here is the whole provision, both sentences:
This Regulation shall not apply to passengers travelling free of charge or at a reduced fare not available directly or indirectly to the public. However, it shall apply to passengers having tickets issued under a frequent flyer programme or other commercial programme by an air carrier or tour operator.
The exception is not buried somewhere else in the text. It is the next sentence, in the same paragraph, and it names frequent flyer programmes explicitly. Avios, Flying Blue, Miles & More, Miles&Smiles, Eurobonus, credit card points transferred into any of them, all covered.
When you write back, quote the second sentence. Not a summary of it, the sentence. It is very hard for a second agent to look at that and keep the rejection standing.
Compensation is set by distance flown and how late you arrived at your final destination. The fare is not an input. It is not reduced, scaled or pro-rated because you paid in points.
| Distance | EU261 | UK261 |
|---|---|---|
| Up to 1,500 km | €250 | £220 |
| 1,500 to 3,500 km | €400 | £350 |
| Over 3,500 km | €600 | £520 |
A family of four redeeming points to Dubai and landing four hours late is owed €2,400. The miles themselves are untouched by the claim. You keep the trip and you keep the compensation.
This is also why the claim is worth more to you than to a full fare passenger. They are being compensated for a £900 ticket. You are being compensated at the same rate for something that cost you a fraction of that.
The money is owed by the operating carrier, meaning whoever flew the aircraft. The programme whose points you spent has nothing to do with it, and neither does the website you booked on.
| Points you spent | Flight operated by | Claim against |
|---|---|---|
| British Airways Avios | Iberia | Iberia |
| American AAdvantage | British Airways | British Airways |
| Flying Blue | KLM | KLM |
| Amex points to Avios | Aer Lingus | Aer Lingus |
People send these claims to the wrong airline constantly, receive a reply saying the booking is not ours, and take it as a refusal. It is not a refusal, it is the right answer to the wrong question. Check the flight number on your boarding pass, not the logo on the booking confirmation.
These are the lines that come back on award claims, in roughly the order you will meet them.
"Your ticket was issued free of charge."
It was not. It was issued under a frequent flyer programme, which Article 3(3) covers in its second sentence. Also, you paid cash for taxes and carrier charges, so the ticket was not free in any sense.
"Compensation is based on the fare paid."
It is not. Article 7 sets compensation by distance. The fare appears nowhere in the calculation.
"This booking is not with our airline."
Correct, and irrelevant. The operating carrier owes the compensation under Article 5. If they flew the aircraft, the claim is theirs.
"The delay was due to operational reasons."
That is not a cause, it is a category. Under Article 5(3) the carrier has to prove the circumstance was extraordinary and unavoidable. Ask them to name the cause and produce the evidence.
Cancellation gives you a choice under Article 8: re-routing, or a refund of the ticket. On an award booking a refund means every component.
That last one is worth pushing on. Programmes charge a redeposit fee when you change your mind about an award booking. Where the airline cancelled the flight and you exercised a right under Article 8, nothing about it was voluntary, so the fee has no basis. Ask for it back in the same letter rather than opening a second case.
If you take re-routing instead, they carry you at no extra cost. They cannot ask for more points because the replacement seat prices higher in the award chart, and they cannot tell you award availability is the limit. Article 8 says the earliest opportunity, and the case law does not let a carrier restrict that to its own aircraft when its own seats are gone.
Part cash, part points. Covered. It is a commercial programme ticket under the second sentence of Article 3(3), and you paid money as well, so both halves of the test point the same way.
Companion and two for one vouchers. Covered, and both passengers are owed in full. Compensation is per passenger, and the second traveller being on a voucher does not reduce their entitlement any more than a child's cheaper ticket reduces theirs.
Points used to upgrade a paid ticket. You are a paying passenger who upgraded. Nothing about the upgrade affects the compensation claim, which was never based on the fare.
Being downgraded on an award ticket. This one is genuinely unsettled, and it is worth being straight about it. Article 10(2) reimburses 30, 50 or 75 per cent of the price of the ticket depending on distance, and nobody has definitively resolved what the price of a ticket is when it was bought with points. The cash you paid is the obvious baseline, but you can reasonably argue the cash value of the points redeemed. Expect an argument, and expect to have to escalate it.
Article 3(3) exists to carve out staff travel and industry discount tickets, the standby fares an airline employee or a travel agent can book that genuinely are not on sale to anyone else. If you flew on a staff ticket, the exclusion applies and you are not covered.
A points booking is nothing like that. Anyone can join the programme, anyone can earn the points, and in most programmes anyone can simply buy them. That makes the fare available to the public indirectly, which is the phrase doing the work in the first sentence and the reason the second sentence exists at all.
Duty of care under Article 9 runs separately from compensation and covers every passenger on the aircraft. Meals and refreshments in proportion to the wait, two phone calls or emails, a hotel and transfers if you are stuck overnight.
It applies even when the cause was weather or air traffic control and no compensation at all is owed. There is no cap on it, and there is nothing in the regulation that lets an airline check what you paid before handing out a hotel voucher.
If they provide nothing, book your own at a reasonable standard, keep every receipt, and claim it back.
Paste this into your claim letter, or send it on its own if they have already rejected you on the grounds that the ticket was free.
My booking was made using a frequent flyer programme. Article 3(3) of Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 provides that the Regulation "shall apply to passengers having tickets issued under a frequent flyer programme or other commercial programme by an air carrier or tour operator". The booking therefore falls within the scope of the Regulation. Compensation under Article 7 is determined by the distance of the flight and the delay in arrival at the final destination. The fare paid is not a factor in that calculation, and no provision of the Regulation reduces compensation by reference to the price of the ticket. I am claiming against you as the operating air carrier of the flight, as defined in Article 2(b).
Send it by email so you have a timestamp, keep the thread, and give them 14 days before you escalate.
Check what your flight is worth