You Missed Your Connection: What the Airline Owes You and What to Do in the Next Hour

Your first flight landed late, you ran, and the gate was closed. Here’s exactly what to do, in order, starting right now.

Step one: go to the airline’s transfer desk, or open the airline’s app, whichever is faster. If your whole trip is on one ticket, the airline must rebook you on the next available flight at no cost. This is not a favor, it’s their obligation, and it applies regardless of why the first flight was late. Many airlines auto-rebook you before you even land; check the app while you walk.

Step two: photograph everything. The departure board showing your first flight’s actual arrival time. The board showing the missed connection. Your boarding passes, both of them. Thirty seconds of photos now wins arguments months later.

Step three: ask one question at the desk and get the answer in writing if you can: “What was the reason for the delay?” Weather, technical fault, crew, air traffic control. Whatever they say, note it, because compensation depends on it and airlines have been known to change the story later.

Step four: do not sign anything, and be careful with vouchers. At big hub airports, stressed passengers get handed forms and meal vouchers with fine print. Accepting care (food, hotel) never cancels your rights. But a signature on a settlement or a “goodwill” voucher accepted as final compensation can. If you don’t fully understand a paper, in a language that isn’t yours, at hour nine of a bad day, don’t sign it. You lose nothing by claiming later from home.

Now here’s what they owe you, because it’s almost certainly more than the desk will volunteer.

They owe you care, starting now, no matter whose fault it is

On any flight covered by EU rules (every departure from an EU or UK airport, plus EU/UK airlines flying in), waiting past two to four hours entitles you to meals and refreshments, paid by the airline. Stuck overnight? Hotel plus transport to it, on them. These care rights apply even when the delay cause is extraordinary, storms, strikes, air traffic control, doesn’t matter. This is the rule almost everyone gets wrong: extraordinary circumstances can cancel your compensation, but they never cancel your right to be fed and housed.

If the desk refuses or the queue is hopeless: buy reasonable food and lodging yourself, keep every receipt, and claim reimbursement after. Reasonable is the key word, an airport meal and a normal hotel, not a suite and champagne.

Canada has its own version under the APPR: food and drink after two hours of departure delay, hotel if you’re stuck overnight, when the disruption is within the airline’s control. And if you’re rerouted such that your new departure is much later, large Canadian carriers must, on request, even book you on a competitor in some situations.

The compensation rule that surprises everyone: it’s measured at your final destination

This is the heart of the missed-connection claim, and the part airlines quietly hope you don’t know.

Say your Montreal flight lands in Paris 55 minutes late. Barely a delay. But it kills your connection to Algiers, and the next flight gets you there five hours after you were supposed to arrive. Under EU rules, the delay that counts is at your final destination, not at the connection point. That 55-minute hiccup just became a full compensation claim, because the courts settled long ago that connecting itineraries are judged as one journey.

The amounts, on the current scale: 250 euros for journeys up to 1,500 km, 400 euros up to 3,500 km, 600 euros beyond that, per passenger, with the distance measured from your origin to your final destination. A family of four missing a Paris connection on a transatlantic itinerary can be looking at 2,400 euros. Not vouchers. Money.

Two conditions. The arrival delay at final destination must be three hours or more. And the cause must not be genuinely extraordinary: weather and air traffic control strikes exempt the airline from compensation (never from care), while technical problems and crew issues generally do not, whatever the desk tells you.

Worth knowing this summer: airlines lobbied hard to raise that three-hour threshold to four or even six hours, which would have wiped out most claims. The EU deal reached in June 2026 kept the three-hour rule and the current amounts intact. Your rights survived. Use them.

In Canada, the APPR runs on its own scale for large carriers when the disruption is within airline control: $400 for arrival delays of three to six hours, $700 for six to nine, $1,000 beyond nine hours, claimed within one year, and the airline has 30 days to answer.

The trap that decides everything: one ticket or two

Here is the single most expensive mistake in air travel, and the moment to learn it is before your next booking, not at a closed gate.

If your whole journey is on one booking, one reservation code, even across two airlines, the connection is the airline’s problem. Miss it because the first flight was late, and they must rebook you free, care for you while you wait, and potentially compensate you at final destination.

If you booked two separate tickets, Montreal to Paris on one, Paris to Algiers on another, the law sees two unrelated trips. First flight lands late, you miss the second? The second airline owes you nothing. You’re a no-show. The fare is gone, and the desk will send you to buy a new ticket at today’s price.

Those separate tickets often look cheaper online. This is why they aren’t. If you ever must book separately, leave an ocean of time between flights, and check whether travel insurance covers the gap, because no regulation does.

If the rebooking is bad, you have choices

The airline’s first rebooking offer is not your only option. If the new routing gets you in absurdly late, ask what else exists, including other airlines’ flights where the rules or the carrier’s own policy allow it. If the delay stretches past five hours and the trip has lost its purpose, EU rules give you the right to abandon it: full refund of the unused ticket plus, if you’re mid-journey, a free flight back to where you started.

And keep your standards on the care while you wait. One meal voucher does not cover a nine-hour stint. Go back and ask again. The obligation is ongoing, not a one-time coupon.

Build the file while it’s fresh

Everything you photographed in the first ten minutes, plus: both boarding passes, the booking confirmation, receipts for anything you bought, the airline’s stated reason for the delay, and the actual arrival time at your final destination (screenshot the flight tracker page that same day). If your checked bag missed the connection too, and they often travel together, that’s a separate claim with its own rules, and it starts at the baggage desk before you leave the airport, PIR in hand. See what to do when your suitcase didn’t arrive.

Then claim in writing to the airline, short and factual. If they blame “extraordinary circumstances,” don’t take it as final. Airlines use that phrase the way a bouncer says “private event.” The burden of proving it is on them, and a striking number of these defenses collapse when someone who knows the case law pushes back.

If you want help with the claim, start here. We review your case and tell you if it’s worth pursuing.

If you’d rather not fight them yourself

That pushing back is what I do. I handle compensation claims for travelers from our community, in French and Arabic when needed, and I’ve seen how differently airlines answer a claim once it stops coming from a tired passenger and starts coming from someone who cites their own tariff back at them. Send me your flight details and I’ll tell you honestly whether there’s money in your case. No fee unless we recover.

But whatever you do with the claim, handle the next hour right: rebooking secured, reason noted, photos taken, receipts kept, nothing signed. The hour at the airport decides how strong your claim is. The claim itself can wait for a calmer day.

Start your claim here.