Flight Cancelled or Delayed? Your Rights as an Air Passenger in India

Which rules protect you?

India's passenger protections sit in the DGCA's Civil Aviation Requirement on facilities for passengers affected by denied boarding, cancellations and delays: CAR Section 3, Series M, Part IV. A separate part of the same series, Part II, covers ticket refunds, and the Ministry of Civil Aviation's Passenger Charter sums both up in plain language.

The CAR is written for Indian scheduled airlines, which means IndiGo, Air India, Air India Express, Akasa Air, SpiceJet and the regional carriers. On a foreign airline's flight out of India, read that airline's conditions of carriage as well. On flights departing Europe or the UK, the much stronger EU and UK rules apply, covered below.

One distinction matters before anything else. Indian rules give you facilities for delays: food, a hotel, and a choice of refund or rebooking. Cash compensation comes only with late cancellations and denied boarding.

What do you get when a flight is delayed?

Block time is the scheduled gate-to-gate time. A Delhi–Mumbai flight is scheduled at about 2 hours 15 minutes, so a two-hour delay should already bring a meal voucher.

There is no cash payout for a delay under the CAR, however long it runs. That surprises many travellers. Money for a ruined day comes from a travel insurance policy with trip delay cover, not from the airline.

In winter, fog in north India causes most long delays. Under a government standard operating procedure introduced in 2024, airlines may cancel flights expected to be delayed by more than three hours instead of holding passengers for hours, so a foggy morning can turn a delay into a cancellation, with the rights that come with it.

What are you owed when a flight is cancelled?

It depends on how much notice you get.

• Two weeks or more before departure: the airline must offer an alternative flight or a full refund.
• Between two weeks and 24 hours before departure: it must offer an alternative flight leaving within two hours of your original time, or a full refund.
• If it fails those tests, including last-minute cancellations: you are owed compensation on top of the refund, unless the cancellation was caused by extraordinary circumstances.

The payout is capped at the lower of that figure and your one-way basic fare plus the airline's fuel charge, so on a cheap sale fare it can be well under the headline amount. If you are already at the airport, the airline should also provide meals and refreshments while you wait for the alternative flight.

What counts as extraordinary circumstances?

The CAR lists political instability, natural disasters, civil war, insurrection, riots, floods, explosions, government regulations, security risks, bad weather, strikes and air traffic control decisions. Airspace closures, such as Pakistan's closure of its airspace to Indian airlines since 2025, fall in this territory, so longer routings and schedule changes caused by them do not attract compensation. You are still entitled to a refund when a flight is cancelled for any of these reasons.

What if you are bumped from an overbooked flight?

Airlines sell more seats than they have, betting on no-shows. When too many passengers turn up, they must first ask for volunteers and agree benefits with them. If you are denied boarding against your will, despite a confirmed ticket and reporting on time:

If no alternative is offered, the higher rate applies and you are owed a full refund as well. None of this applies if you missed the check-in or boarding cut-off, lacked travel documents, or were refused boarding for safety or behaviour reasons.

How do refunds work?

• Paid by card: the refund should reach the card within 7 days.
• Paid in cash at an airline office: refunded immediately.
• Booked through a travel agent or portal: the airline remains responsible, and the refund should be completed within 30 working days.
• Taxes and airport fees (user development, airport development and passenger service fees) must be refunded on every unused ticket, including non-refundable fares and no-shows.
• Credit shell: holding your money as a credit shell is your choice, not the airline's default.
• Look-in option: when you book directly with an airline, you get a free window after booking to cancel or change without a fee, as long as the flight is far enough away. It was 24 hours under the rules in force when this guide was last reviewed; a 2025 DGCA draft proposed extending it, so check the current rule.

At the airport, ask the airline for the reason for the delay or cancellation in writing, photograph the departures board, and keep every food and taxi receipt. That paper trail decides both airline claims and insurance claims.

How do you claim, and where do you complain?

1. Ask at the airline counter first, for meals, rebooking or a refund on the spot.
2. Write to the airline's customer care and then its grievance or nodal officer, listed on its website, with your PNR, boarding pass, the reason given and your receipts.
3. If there is no satisfactory reply, file a complaint on AirSewa, the government's grievance portal for air passengers.
4. For money still owed, call the National Consumer Helpline on 1915, then approach the consumer commission through the e-Daakhil portal.
5. Claim trip delay or cancellation benefits from your travel insurance separately. It pays in addition to anything the airline owes you.

Separate tickets are the gap in all of this. If a delayed IndiGo flight makes you miss an Emirates flight booked on a different ticket, neither airline owes you a new seat. That is one more reason to book connections on one ticket, as our baggage rules guide also explains.

What about flights from Europe and the UK?

Flights departing an EU airport, and flights into the EU on an EU airline, fall under EU Regulation 261/2004, and the UK keeps its own version. For journeys over 3,500 km, which covers Europe to India, compensation for a short-notice cancellation, a long arrival delay or denied boarding is €600 under EU rules and £520 under UK rules, about ₹61,000 either way. It is halved when the arrival delay is between three and four hours, and extraordinary circumstances are excluded here too.

So if your flight home from London lands five hours late, claim under the UK rules whichever airline you flew. The same delay on the outbound leg from Delhi is covered by UK rules only on a UK airline; on Air India it falls under Indian rules alone. Our flight route guides list the airlines on each sector, and the wider travel guides section covers visas and insurance.