Denied boarding is not only overbooking. If you held a confirmed reservation, presented yourself on time, and the airline refused to carry you for any reason other than health, safety, security or your documents, Article 4(3) pays the Article 7 sum: €250, €400 or €600, or £220, £350 or £520 in the UK.
The definition does the work
Article 2(j) defines denied boarding as “a refusal to carry passengers on a flight, although they have presented themselves for boarding under the conditions laid down in Article 3(2), except where there are reasonable grounds to deny them boarding, such as reasons of health, safety or security, or inadequate travel documentation.”
Read what is absent. The word “overbooking” does not appear. The test has two halves: did you present yourself under Article 3(2) — a confirmed reservation, checked in at the stated time or at the latest 45 minutes before departure — and did the airline have reasonable grounds. Everything else is the airline’s problem, and Article 4(3) then requires it to “immediately compensate them in accordance with Article 7 and assist them in accordance with Articles 8 and 9”.
The case that settled it
In Finnair v Lassooy (C-22/11, 4 October 2012) a strike had grounded an earlier flight, the airline reshuffled its passengers across later ones, and Mr Lassooy lost the seat he held on a flight that operated normally. The Court held that denied boarding applies “not only to cases where boarding is denied because of overbooking but also to those where boarding is denied on other grounds, such as operational reasons”.
It went further on the defence. Extraordinary circumstances that led the carrier to reschedule flights “cannot give grounds for denying boarding on those later flights or for exempting that carrier from its obligation” to compensate the passenger bumped from one. Article 4(3) contains no extraordinary-circumstances exception at all, which is why a strike three days ago does not answer a refusal today.
So: a smaller aircraft swapped in, a crew seat needed, a weight restriction, a systems failure at the gate, a re-accommodation after an earlier cancellation — all of these are refusals on grounds that are not reasonable within Article 2(j), and all of them pay.
Get the refusal in writing before you leave the gate. Ask the agent to state on your boarding pass or by email why you were not carried, and keep the boarding pass with the gate stamp. Airlines later recode a bump as a missed connection or a no-show, and the gate note is the one document that stops it.
What counts as reasonable grounds
The examples in Article 2(j) are health, safety, security and inadequate travel documentation. They are real, and they are also where refusals get argued: a visa the airline read wrongly, a passport with enough validity, a medical judgement made in thirty seconds at the gate. The grounds have to be reasonable and they have to exist — an assertion is not a ground. Ask which of the four it was, and on what evidence.
If it was genuinely one of them, no compensation is due. If it was the airline’s own operational convenience wearing one of those words, the claim stands.
Care and re-routing come too
Article 4(3) sends you to Articles 8 and 9 as well as to Article 7. That means the choice between a refund within seven days and re-routing at the earliest opportunity, and it means meals, calls, and a hotel with transport where a night becomes necessary — immediately, with no waiting threshold. See when an airline owes you meals and a hotel.
When the fixed sum does not cover the damage
In Rusu v Blue Air (C-354/18, 29 July 2019) — itself a denied-boarding case — the Court held that the Article 7(1)(b) amount is not intended to compensate damage such as loss of salary, and that such damage may be claimed as the further compensation provided for in Article 12(1), assessed by a national court. The fixed sum answers the standardised inconvenience; a proven individual loss is a separate, evidenced claim.
Send the denied boarding letter with the band from the amounts table. If the airline refuses on a cause, test it in the extraordinary circumstances tool — and if it still refuses, escalate to the regulator.
I arrived late at the gate — is that denied boarding?
Probably not. Article 2(j) protects passengers who presented themselves under Article 3(2), which means checking in by the airline’s stated time or at the latest 45 minutes before departure. If you met that and were still refused, it is denied boarding whatever the gate said.
The airline downgraded me instead of refusing me — same thing?
No, that is Article 10, which reimburses a percentage of the price rather than paying the Article 7 band. Use the downgrade reimbursement letter instead.
Can they pay me in vouchers?
Only if you agree in writing. Article 7(3) provides for payment in cash, by electronic bank transfer, bank order or cheque, and in travel vouchers only “with the signed agreement of the passenger”. Turning down a voucher at the gate costs you nothing.