Transavia owes €250, €400 or €600 when you reach your destination three or more hours late, when it cancels with under 14 days’ notice, or when it denies you boarding. It holds a Dutch operating licence, so EU261 covers the flights it operates out of Europe and the flights it operates into Europe, and the fare you paid makes no difference to the sum.
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 Transavia flight
| Your flight | Regime |
|---|---|
| Departs an airport in the EU or EEA | EU261 — Article 3(1)(a), whichever airline flies you; the body is the country you left |
| Arrives in the EU from a third country on Transavia | EU261 — Article 3(1)(b) is satisfied because Transavia holds an EU operating licence |
HV and TO are two airlines. This page is Transavia, the Dutch company with IATA code HV, licensed in the Netherlands and supervised by the Dutch inspectorate. Transavia France flies under a separate French operating licence and the IATA code TO, and its complaints go to the French DGAC. They share a brand, a livery and a booking site; they do not share a defendant or a regulator. The code on your booking reference and the “operated by” line decide which one owes you — see which airline actually owes you.
Where the bands land on a Transavia route
Great-circle distance to your final destination sets the amount. Transavia’s network is short and medium-haul leisure flying, so almost everything sits in the two lower bands — with one instructive exception. From the airport coordinates this site ships:
| Route | Great-circle | Band |
|---|---|---|
| Amsterdam – Nice | 979 km | €250 |
| Rotterdam – Alicante | 1,569 km | €400 |
| Amsterdam – Alicante | 1,613 km | €400 |
| Eindhoven – Malta | 1,880 km | €400 |
| Amsterdam – Faro | 1,970 km | €400 |
| Amsterdam – Heraklion | 2,481 km | €400 |
| Amsterdam – Marrakech | 2,525 km | €400 |
| Amsterdam – Gran Canaria | 3,183 km | €400 |
| Amsterdam – Tenerife South | 3,224 km | €400 |
| Amsterdam – Hurghada | 3,689 km | €600 |
The Canaries are the trap in that table. At over 3,000 km they feel like long-haul, but both ends are inside the Union and Article 7(1)(b) caps an intra-Community flight at €400 however far it goes. Hurghada is only 465 km further than Tenerife, sits outside the Union and past the 3,500 km line, and pays €600. Morocco is outside the Union too, but Marrakech is under 3,500 km, so it stays at €400. The measuring rule is in how flight distance is measured.
Where to send a Transavia claim
We could not open Transavia’s own disruption or compensation pages: transavia.com returned HTTP 403 to every one of three candidate paths on 6 September 2026, so we do not publish a claim URL here. Use the airline’s own help centre, keep the reference number, and send the same text by email as well. Give the booking reference, every flight number, and the actual arrival time at your destination — that time, not the departure delay, is what the Article 7 test turns on.
After a refusal, the Netherlands’ enforcement body is the Inspectie Leefomgeving en Transport (ILT), and its English online complaint form is the filing itself. If the flight left another country, that country’s body takes it: the European Commission’s instruction on its list of national enforcement bodies, updated 27 August 2026, is to contact the body in the country where the incident took place. For a Transavia France flight, that is usually the DGAC’s own report form, which takes delay, cancellation, denied boarding and downgrade reports.
Are there Court of Justice cases against Transavia on compensation?
We looked and did not find one we could verify. Searching EUR-Lex for a Regulation 261/2004 judgment naming Transavia as a party returned nothing on 6 September 2026, so this page names none. That is not a gap in your rights: the Regulation and the Sturgeon line apply to Transavia exactly as they apply to any other EU carrier.
Transavia says the delay was outside its control. Now what?
Ask it to say what the event was, and to prove it could not have avoided the delay with all reasonable measures — Article 5(3) puts both halves of that on the airline. Crew shortages, an aircraft rotating late from an earlier flight and ordinary technical failures are usually within its control. Read extraordinary circumstances before you accept a refusal.
Does the low fare reduce what Transavia owes?
No. The Article 7 sums are set by distance, not by what you paid, and on a cheap seat the compensation can exceed the fare. Work out your figure in the compensation calculator and claim it in full.
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.