Stranded passengers mix up two different rights and lose both. Care — meals, hotels, getting you where you were going — is owed during serious disruption on UK flights almost regardless of cause. Compensation is a separate payment owed only when the airline's at fault. Plain-English basics below; your airline's policy and the UK CAA's official guidance govern the specifics, so always check both.
Every fare comes with claim-ready paperwork
On UK-protected flights, serious delays and cancellations trigger care duties — meals proportionate to the wait, hotel accommodation for overnight strandings, transport between airport and hotel, and rerouting to your destination. Weather and ATC failures generally don't cancel these duties; “extraordinary” excuses compensation, not care.
The fixed cash payments for long delays and cancellations apply when the cause sits within the airline's control — crew, technical, scheduling. Storms and air-traffic failures typically exempt it. Different claim, different form, different rules: don't let a “no compensation” answer talk you out of the care you're owed anyway.
When airlines fail to provide care — no hotel desk, no coach, no staff — passengers who arrange reasonable alternatives and keep itemised receipts are generally in a strong claiming position. Reasonable is the operative word: a fixed-fare taxi home reads very differently from a chauffeured detour via dinner.
Getting you from the diversion airport to your original destination is normally the airline's job — coach, rebooking or reimbursed transport. If the provided option is absent or unreasonable (three hours for a coach at 1am with children), document it and act: the diversion playbook covers the sequence.
Rebooked to tomorrow means tonight is the airline's problem: hotel and meals, or reimbursement where they fail to arrange them. Many passengers within an hour of home skip the hotel scrum entirely — a documented taxi home is often the cheaper, saner, claimable option.
Care escalates with the wait: refreshments first, meals later, communication throughout. Keep timestamps — when the delay was announced, what was offered, when. The paper trail is tedious for exactly as long as it isn't decisive.
This is general guidance, not legal advice: coverage depends on the flight's protections, the airline's policy and the specific facts. The UK CAA publishes the authoritative passenger-rights guidance — read it before a big claim, and route disputes through the airline first, then the relevant resolution scheme.
Get moving first, claim second — every fare here comes with the receipt that makes it painless.