# LOT Polish Airlines Compensation Claim (EU261)

> €250, €400 or €600 from LOT, and Warsaw–London lands 31 km inside the €250 band. Plus the two Court of Justice judgments that carry LOT's own name.

- Canonical: https://flightclaimletters.pages.dev/guides/lot-polish-airlines-compensation/
- Section: By airline (https://flightclaimletters.pages.dev/guides/#airlines)
- Published: 6 Sept 2026 · Figures checked: 6 Sept 2026 · 5 min read
- Source site: flightclaimletters — https://flightclaimletters.pages.dev/ · General information, not legal advice.

LOT Polish Airlines owes €250, €400 or €600 when you land three or more hours late at your final destination, when it cancels with under 14 days' notice, or when it denies you boarding. It holds a Polish operating licence, so EU261 covers the flights it operates out of Europe and into Europe alike, including the long-haul programme from Warsaw.

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](/guides/eu261-uk261-amounts/).

## Which regime applies to your LOT flight

| Your flight | Regime |
|---|---|
| Departs an airport in the EU or EEA, **or** arrives in the EU from a third country on LOT | **EU261** — euro amounts, enforcement body of the country where it happened |
| Departs a UK airport | **UK261** — £220, £350 or £520, and the CAA route |

## Warsaw–London is €250, and Warsaw–Chicago is €600

Great-circle distance to your final destination sets the amount. Warsaw's position gives LOT a long list of routes near the top band and one famous near miss at the bottom. From the airport coordinates this site ships:

| Route | Great-circle | Band |
|---|---|---|
| Warsaw – Kraków | 246 km | €250 |
| Warsaw – Vilnius | 396 km | €250 |
| Warsaw – Frankfurt | 897 km | €250 |
| Warsaw – London Heathrow | 1,469 km | €250 |
| Warsaw – Tel Aviv | 2,508 km | €400 |
| Warsaw – Lisbon | 2,749 km | €400 |
| Warsaw – New York JFK | 6,848 km | €600 |
| Warsaw – Toronto | 6,935 km | €600 |
| Warsaw – Chicago | 7,519 km | €600 |
| Warsaw – Seoul Incheon | 7,726 km | €600 |
| Warsaw – Tokyo Narita | 8,613 km | €600 |

London falls 31 km short of the 1,500 km threshold, so a six-hour delay to Heathrow is €250 from Warsaw and £220 the other way. The transatlantic and Asian routes are all comfortably past 3,500 km with one end outside the Union, which puts the entire long-haul network in the €600 band. The measuring rule is in [how flight distance is measured](/guides/how-flight-distance-is-measured/).

## Two judgments with LOT's name on them

Both are recent, both are on EUR-Lex, and both change what you do rather than only what you know.

**[Polskie Linie Lotnicze 'LOT' SA v Budapest Főváros Kormányhivatala](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A62020CJ0597)** (C-597/20, 29 September 2022). The Court held that Article 16 lets a Member State authorise its national enforcement body to **compel** an air carrier to pay Article 7 compensation on an individual passenger's complaint, provided the passenger and the carrier can still go to court. That is the answer to any regulator that tells you it only supervises: whether it can order payment depends on the powers its own state gave it, not on the Regulation forbidding it.

**[JW and Others v LOT Polish Airlines](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A62021CJ0020)** (C-20/21, 3 February 2022). Passengers on a single booking, Warsaw to Frankfurt to Malé, sued in Frankfurt over a delay on the first leg. The Court held that where the claim arises exclusively from a delay on the first leg and is brought against the carrier that operated it, the arrival airport of that first leg is **not** a "place of performance" giving jurisdiction. The suit belonged where the first leg departed.

> **Suing in the wrong country costs you months, not the claim.** C-20/21 says the intermediate airport does not give you a court. If your only complaint is the delay of the leg into the hub, look to where that leg took off or where the whole journey ends — and check the limitation period for that country before you file, because there is no EU-wide period: see [claim time limits by country](/guides/claim-time-limit-by-country/).

## Where a LOT claim goes after a refusal

We could not open LOT's own passenger-rights page: lot.com returned HTTP 404 on one candidate path and an access-blocked page on the other, on 6 September 2026. We do not publish a claim URL we have not opened. Use LOT's own help centre, keep the reference, and send the same text by email.

Poland's body is the **Rzecznik Praw Pasażerów** — the Passengers' Rights Ombudsman at the President of the Civil Aviation Office (ULC). Its site returned HTTP 403 to every automated request we made on 6 September 2026, so we cannot quote its conditions or publish a link we could not open; the current contact details are in the European Commission's [list of national enforcement bodies](https://transport.ec.europa.eu/transport-themes/passenger-rights/national-enforcement-bodies-neb_en), updated 27 August 2026, and in [where to complain](/tools/where-to-complain/). The Commission's own instruction is to contact the body in the country where the incident took place — for a LOT flight out of Frankfurt or Vilnius, that is Germany or Lithuania, not Poland. For a UK departure, neither CAA-approved scheme listed LOT on 6 September 2026, which leaves CAA PACT, and the CAA says PACT cannot make a binding decision on an airline.

## My connection through Warsaw made me late. What can I claim?

On one booking with at least one end in the EU, the delay is measured at your final destination and the band over the whole journey, so a delayed feeder into Warsaw can carry a €600 claim. Check the "operated by" line first: Article 2(b) puts the obligation on the airline that flew the leg, and see [which airline actually owes you](/guides/codeshare-which-airline-pays/).

## LOT offered a voucher. Do I have to take it?

No. Article 7(3) pays compensation in cash, by electronic bank transfer, bank order or cheque, and allows a travel voucher only with your signed agreement. Decline it in writing, say that you want payment by bank transfer, and give the account details once.

## 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](/guides/eu261-reform-2026/).