Lufthansa owes €250, €400 or €600 by distance — £220, £350 or £520 from a UK airport — for a three-hour arrival delay, a cancellation with under 14 days’ notice, or denied boarding. It is licensed in Germany, so EU261 covers every flight it operates out of the EU and into the EU. A refusal goes to the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt.
Which figure applies is set by distance to your final destination, not by your fare — the bands are in the amounts table.
Which regime applies to your Lufthansa flight
| Your flight | Regime |
|---|---|
| Departs an EU airport, or arrives in the EU from outside on Lufthansa | EU261 — euro amounts, enforcement body of the country you left |
| Departs a UK airport | UK261 — sterling amounts, CAA route |
Lufthansa is the airline named in the case that settled the three-hour rule
Sturgeon created the right in 2009; it was Nelson v Deutsche Lufthansa AG (C-581/10, 23 October 2012) that confirmed it. The Court held that passengers who lose three hours or more reach their destination late enough to be entitled to the Article 7 sum, and that this is compatible with the Montreal Convention.
Airlines stopped disputing the principle after that judgment. If a Lufthansa reply suggests Article 7 does not reach delays, the answer is one line: the case that decided it was brought against Lufthansa, and Lufthansa lost.
Your “Lufthansa” flight may not have been operated by Lufthansa
The Lufthansa Group flies under several licences. Our carrier file records that a flight sold as Lufthansa may have been operated by Discover, CityLine, Air Dolomiti, Eurowings, Swiss, Austrian or Brussels Airlines — and Article 2(b) puts the obligation on the airline that operated it.
One of those matters more than the rest. Swiss is neither an EU nor an EEA carrier, because Switzerland is in neither. A flight into the EU from outside it, operated by Swiss, is outside Regulation 261/2004 — Swiss departures are covered by the equivalent Swiss rules, enforced by FOCA. Check the “operated by” line before you write; see which airline actually owes you.
We could not confirm a claim URL
We do not publish an airline link we could not open. On 6 September 2026 lufthansa.com returned HTTP 403 to every automated request, including its own home page, so no claim URL is listed for Lufthansa in our carrier file. Use its passenger-rights and feedback pages in a browser, keep the case reference, and set a date for a reply.
Which band you are in, and when it can be halved
The €600 band needs more than 3,500 km with one end outside the EU — the long-haul sectors out of Frankfurt and Munich. Any flight with both ends inside the EU is capped at €400 by Article 7(1)(b), however far it goes. On a connecting itinerary booked as one ticket, the band is measured over the whole journey to your final destination, which is how a short first leg still produces a top-band claim: see connecting flights and the final destination.
Article 7(2) lets the airline halve the amount only where it re-routes you and you land within 2, 3 or 4 hours of your original arrival, by band; the Court in Sturgeon (paragraph 63) applies the same reduction to a flight of more than 3,500 km that arrives three to under four hours late, giving €300.
Where a Lufthansa claim goes after a refusal
- EU departures. Germany’s enforcement body is the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt (LBA), which takes complaints in English (fluggastrechte@lba.de). Germany also has a conciliation body for travel and transport, the Schlichtungsstelle Reise & Verkehr, the former söp — we did not verify which airlines belong to it, so check there before you file. For departures from any other EU country, use that country’s body.
- UK departures. Lufthansa was on neither CAA-approved ADR scheme’s member list on 6 September 2026, so the UK route is CAA PACT, which cannot make a binding decision.
A strike is not one thing. Whose strike it was decides the answer, and an airline that writes only “strike” has not answered the question. Ask which workforce stopped, on which date, and what re-routing was offered — then read airline strikes and compensation.
I missed my connection in Frankfurt. Can I still claim?
Yes, if you were on one booking and reached your final destination three or more hours late for a reason within the airline’s control. The band is set by the distance to that final destination, not by the leg that went wrong.
Which Lufthansa Group airline do I claim from?
The one that operated the flight, under Article 2(b) — Lufthansa, CityLine, Discover, Air Dolomiti, Eurowings, Swiss, Austrian or Brussels. A claim addressed to the wrong group company is rejected on the technicality instead of the merits.
How long do I have to claim in Germany?
There is no EU-wide deadline; the period is set by the national law that applies to your claim. We have not verified the German limitation period against the statute, so we will not print a number — ask the Luftfahrt-Bundesamt or check the German civil code before you rely on a date.
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.