Austrian Airlines owes €250, €400 or €600 when you reach your final destination three or more hours late, when it cancels with under 14 days’ notice, or when it denies you boarding. It holds an Austrian operating licence, so EU261 covers the flights it operates out of Europe and the flights it operates into Europe alike.
Article 7 names cancellation and denied boarding. The same fixed sum after a three-hour arrival delay comes from Sturgeon (C-402/07 and C-432/07, 2009), upheld in Nelson (C-581/10 and C-629/10, 2012). The bands are in the amounts table.
Which regime applies to your Austrian flight
| Your flight | Regime |
|---|---|
| Departs an airport in the EU or EEA, or arrives in the EU from a third country on Austrian | EU261 — euro amounts, enforcement body of the country you left |
| Departs a UK airport | UK261 — £220, £350 or £520, and the CAA route |
A trip that only touches Europe in Vienna is outside the Regulation. In Airhelp Limited v Austrian Airlines AG (C-451/20, 24 February 2022) the Court held that Regulation 261/2004 does not apply to a connecting flight booked as one reservation but made of two flights, both operated by Community carriers, where the departure airport of the first flight and the arrival airport of the second are both in a third country and only the stopover is in a Member State. In plain terms: a journey that begins outside the EU, changes planes in Vienna and ends outside the EU is not an EU261 journey, even on one ticket and even on European metal the whole way. Article 3(1) looks at the two ends of the trip, not at the middle.
The other case with Austrian’s name on it
Austrian Airlines AG is also a named carrier in the joined cases decided on 21 December 2021 — C-146/20, C-188/20, C-196/20 and C-270/20, with Corendon Airlines, Azurair and Eurowings. The useful holding there runs the other way: a flight whose departure is brought forward by more than one hour is a cancellation, which opens Article 7, and the airline may not halve the payment under Article 7(2) because the brought-forward flight got you in early. The judgment also confirms that a carrier can be the operating carrier even where you never booked with it directly, which matters on a tour operator’s ticket.
Where the bands land from Vienna
Great-circle distance to your final destination sets the amount. From the airport coordinates this site ships:
| Route | Great-circle | Band |
|---|---|---|
| Vienna – Budapest | 215 km | €250 |
| Vienna – Frankfurt | 621 km | €250 |
| Vienna – London Heathrow | 1,275 km | €250 |
| Vienna – Lisbon | 2,305 km | €400 |
| Vienna – Tel Aviv | 2,361 km | €400 |
| Vienna – New York JFK | 6,805 km | €600 |
| Vienna – Male | 7,264 km | €600 |
| Vienna – Bangkok | 8,451 km | €600 |
| Vienna – Tokyo Haneda | 9,143 km | €600 |
London is the line worth remembering: at 1,275 km it is inside the 1,500 km band, so a long delay to Heathrow is €250 from Vienna and £220 the other way, not the middle figure people expect from a two-hour flight. The measuring rule is in how flight distance is measured.
Name the right company
Austrian belongs to a group that sells several brands, and Article 2(b) puts the obligation on the airline that operated the flight, not the one whose code is on the ticket. An OS flight number can be flown by a partner, and a partner’s number can be flown by Austrian. Read the “operated by” line on your booking confirmation before you address the letter — see which airline actually owes you.
Where an Austrian claim goes after a refusal
We could not open Austrian’s own passenger-rights page: austrian.com returned HTTP 403 to every automated request on 6 September 2026, including its own site root, so we do not publish a claim URL here. Use the airline’s own help centre, keep the reference, and send the same text by email.
Austria’s body is the Agentur für Passagier- und Fahrgastrechte (apf). Its flight complaints page sets one condition before it will take the case: you submitted the complaint in writing to the company and got an unsatisfactory answer, or no answer at all, within six weeks. Requests go in through its online form or by post to Vienna. So the six weeks start when your letter goes out, which is a reason to send it the week you land. A departure from another EU state goes to that state’s body instead. For a UK departure, neither CAA-approved scheme listed Austrian on 6 September 2026, which leaves CAA PACT and its non-binding decisions: see escalate to the regulator.
My connection in Vienna made me late. Does that count?
On a single booking with at least one end in the EU, yes — the delay is measured at your final destination and the band over the whole journey, so a short first leg can carry a top-band claim. If both ends are in third countries, C-451/20 above is the answer, and it is no.
Austrian blamed the weather. Is that the end of it?
Not by itself. Article 5(3) requires the airline to prove both the extraordinary circumstance and that it could not have avoided the delay with all reasonable measures. Ask which flight, which airport and which measures, and read extraordinary circumstances.
Rules in force today
This is the law that applies to a flight you take today. A revision of Regulation 261/2004 was adopted in July 2026 — the Parliament approved the conciliation text on 7 July 2026 and the Council gave final approval on 13 July 2026 — and it is not yet in force: it applies 12 months after it enters into force following publication in the Official Journal, and the final text sets the details. See what the 2026 EU261 reform changes.