If your Smartwings 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 flightSmartwings is licensed in the Czech Republic, which makes it an EU carrier. You are covered on its flights into the EU from anywhere in the world as well as on everything departing it.
It flies a mix of scheduled and holiday charter routes out of Prague and across central Europe. Compensation is unaffected by what you paid.
The amount is set by the straight-line distance from where you departed to your final destination. These are real distances on routes Smartwings flies:
| Example route | Distance | If delayed 3h+ |
|---|---|---|
| Prague to London | 1,044 km | €250 |
| Prague to Heraklion | 1,864 km | €400 |
| Prague to Hurghada | 3,042 km | €400 |
A delay pays at three hours or more, measured by when the aircraft door opened at your destination rather than when you took off.
A large part of what Smartwings flies is chartered by tour operators, which leads to a common mistake. People assume that because they bought a package, their only route is through the travel company.
It is not. EU261 is owed by the operating carrier, so the claim lies against Smartwings whoever sold you the holiday. Your package travel rights against the tour operator run alongside it, separately, and pursuing one does not give up the other.
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 Smartwings'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 Smartwings 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 Smartwings flight is very often still claimable.
Check your Smartwings flight