Your rights after a long delay
A long enough delay is treated like a cancellation: once your itinerary changes by three hours or more on a domestic flight, or six hours or more internationally, you can decline the new schedule and take a cash refund instead.
Below those thresholds federal rules give you no payment for the delay itself. That is the honest answer, and it is different from Europe.
What the regulation actually says
“(1) The consumer is scheduled to depart from the origination airport three hours or more for domestic itineraries and six hours or more for international itineraries earlier than the original scheduled departure time … (2) The consumer is scheduled to arrive at the destination airport three or more hours for domestic itineraries or six or more hours for international itineraries after the original scheduled arrival time”
In plain terms. Three hours domestic, six hours international, measured on either departure or arrival. Cross that line and the change is "significant", which is what unlocks the refund.
Read 14 CFR 260.2 in fullWhen 14 CFR 260.2 changed
Rights are not fixed. Each entry below is an amendment recorded in the regulation’s own source note, oldest first.
- Apr. 26, 2024 89 FR 32832The automatic-refund rule is published, defining for the first time what counts as a significant change.
- Aug. 12, 2024 89 FR 65536Amended.
Dates and Federal Register citations come from the source note published with the regulation. Where an entry carries no description, the source note records the amendment without summarising it, and we do not guess at what changed.
How often this actually happens
The rule tells you what you are owed. Federal performance data tells you how often the situation arises, and on which airlines. These figures are ours, computed from the sources listed at the foot of the page.
In 2024, 28.8% of Frontier flights arrived 15 or more minutes late (n = 208,624 flights).
Reporting carriers only. Note that the DOT counts a flight as late at 15 minutes, which is far short of the three-hour threshold that triggers a refund right.
Every figure here is validated against its source row before this page can publish. The rules behind that check are on our editorial guidelines page.
What this does not cover
- The 15-minute mark is the DOT’s reporting definition of "late". It is not a rights threshold. Nothing is owed at 15 minutes.
- There is no US equivalent of EC 261 fixed delay compensation. Any figure you see quoting €250 to €600 for a delayed US domestic flight is describing European law.
- Average delay figures are computed across delayed flights only, so a carrier that cancels its worst flights can look better on that measure. Always read a delay average next to the cancellation rate.
How courts have read it
We are building a case library from federal opinions on denied boarding, tarmac delays, refunds and deceptive-practice claims, sourced from CourtListener and attributed to the Free Law Project. It is not published yet, and rather than summarise holdings we have not verified line by line, this section stays empty until it is.
Row30 provides data journalism and education, not legal advice. We are not a law firm and do not represent passengers in legal proceedings. For advice about your own situation, consult an attorney.
Source: U.S. DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, Airline On-Time Performance; analysis by Row30.