ANSWER · UK 261 AND EC 261
What are my rights during a tarmac delay?
EC 261 and UK 261 have no separate tarmac rule: the ordinary clocks run while you sit on board. Care under Art. 6 starts at 2 hours of departure delay on flights of 1,500 km or less and at 3 or 4 hours on longer ones, from 5 hours you can abandon the trip and take a refund, and compensation turns on arriving 3 hours or more late.
REVIEWED AGAINST RULE SET V6 AND THE CITED PRIMARY SOURCES · UPDATED 7 AUGUST 2026
What the airline owes while you sit on board
Art. 9 entitles waiting passengers to meals and refreshments in a reasonable relation to the waiting time and two free communications. Nothing in the regulation switches those duties off because the doors are shut.
The 5 hour mark
From a 5 hour delay, Art. 6 opens the Art. 8 refund route: you can abandon the journey and require the ticket price back for the parts not flown, with a return flight to your starting point where the trip no longer serves its purpose.
A tarmac wait from the case law
In Eglītis and Ratnieks, passengers for a 20.35 Copenhagen to Riga departure boarded and waited on the aircraft until around 22.45 during a Swedish airspace closure before the flight was cancelled. The judgment turned on what the airline's planning should have absorbed, not on the wait itself.
THE JUDGMENTS BEHIND THIS ANSWER
SOURCES
- Regulation (EC) No 261/2004, Art. 6 · EUR-Lex · checked 7 August 2026
- Regulation (EC) No 261/2004, Art. 9 · EUR-Lex · checked 7 August 2026
- Case C-294/10 Eglītis and Ratnieks, judgment of 12 May 2011 · EUR-Lex · checked 7 August 2026
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