UK passengers escalated 51,218 complaints against airlines to official complaint bodies in 2025. In Germany, the national travel arbitration body took in almost 35,000 new flight cases. Both countries saw complaints climb again in the first half of 2026.
Why this matters: these figures count only the passengers who complained to an airline, were refused or ignored, and then went to an ombudsman, an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) scheme or a regulator. They show where airline complaint handling breaks down, which airlines generate the most disputes, and how often passengers win.
Key Takeaways
- UK complaint cases rose 16% in the first half of 2026 compared with the same period of 2025, and German arbitration requests rose by more than half.
- Ryanair cases at UK complaint bodies jumped from about 10,100 to 15,863 in a year, while Wizz Air still had the highest complaint rate of any large airline at 629 per million passengers.
- Delays are behind about half of air passenger complaints in the UK, Ireland and Spain, ahead of cancellations.
How Many Air Passenger Complaints Reach UK Complaint Bodies
When a UK airline rejects a complaint, the passenger can take it to the airline's ADR scheme or, if the airline is not in one, to the CAA's Passenger Advice and Complaints Team (PACT). The CAA publishes the caseload of all three bodies every quarter.
Source: UK Civil Aviation Authority, passenger complaints data, quarterly files for 2019 to Q2 2026 (data for Q1 2023 to Q4 2025 revised 14 May 2026). AirAdvisor's calculation of annual totals.
Complaints peaked in 2023 at 55,627 cases. Volumes fell back in 2024 and then rose by 8.5% in 2025. The 2020 total matched 2019 despite far fewer flights, after a spike of 8,538 AviationADR cases in the second quarter, during the first pandemic lockdown. The 2021 low came in a year with very little flying. ADR schemes now handle more than nine in ten cases, and almost every large UK airline belongs to one. In 2025, about 90% of all cases fell under the UK version of Regulation 261, which covers delays, cancellations and denied boarding.
UK Complaints Follow the Summer Holidays
Quarterly figures show a regular pattern. Passengers usually complain a few weeks after the trip, so complaints filed in the third quarter mostly reflect summer disruption.
Source: UK Civil Aviation Authority, passenger complaints data, quarterly files for 2019 to Q2 2026 (data for Q1 2023 to Q4 2025 revised 14 May 2026). AirAdvisor's calculation of annual totals.
The third quarter has been the busiest in every year shown. The first quarter of 2026 broke the pattern: 15,475 cases, the highest first-quarter total in the CAA's data since 2019 and well above the summer of 2025. The first half of 2026 brought 27,601 cases, up from 23,745 a year earlier. The UK's new ADR rules under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 took effect on 6 April 2026, so later quarters may not be directly comparable with earlier ones.
Which Airlines Get the Most UK Complaints
Raw case numbers favour the biggest carriers, so the CAA's financial-year files are the best way to see which airlines are moving in the wrong direction. These are the six airlines with the most cases.
Source: UK Civil Aviation Authority, Passenger Complaints Data FY25 (Q2 2024 to Q1 2025) and FY26 (Q2 2025 to Q1 2026), data correct as of 3 June 2026.
Ryanair cases rose by 57% in a year, from 10,083 to 15,863, almost twice the total of any other airline. Wizz Air and British Airways moved the other way, down 30% and 20%. Air France-KLM rose by 60% from a smaller base. The airline ranking at UK complaint bodies matches the airlines with the largest UK operations, which is why the rate per passenger, shown next, is the fairer comparison.
Complaints per Million Passengers
The CAA also divides each airline's cases by the number of passengers it flew from the UK. The chart covers every airline with at least 250 cases in the year to March 2026.
Source: UK Civil Aviation Authority, Passenger Complaints Data FY25 (Q2 2024 to Q1 2025) and FY26 (Q2 2025 to Q1 2026), data correct as of 3 June 2026.
Wizz Air generated 629 complaints per million passengers, four times the rate at easyJet or British Airways, although its rate fell from 918 a year earlier. Air France-KLM and Ryanair complete the top three. Jet2, which is not in an ADR scheme and refers passengers to the CAA, had the lowest rate of any large airline at 22 per million. Readers who want the punctuality side of the story can compare these rates with our most unreliable airlines in Europe rankings.
How Often UK Passengers Win
An upheld complaint means the passenger received a remedy, either because the airline settled or because the adjudicator ruled in their favour. Uphold rates vary sharply between the three bodies.
Source: UK Civil Aviation Authority, Passenger Complaints Data FY25 (Q2 2024 to Q1 2025) and FY26 (Q2 2025 to Q1 2026), data correct as of 3 June 2026.
CEDR, which handles British Airways, upheld 72.9% of the cases it decided, while AviationADR, which handles most low-cost and foreign airlines, upheld 38.2%. Rates fell at all three bodies in the latest year. Passengers received £12.2 million through the two ADR schemes in the year to March 2026, down from £15.2 million a year earlier. The CAA notes that uphold rates partly depend on which airlines belong to each scheme, so the gap is not a direct measure of how strict each body is.
What UK Passengers Complain About
AviationADR, the UK's largest air complaint scheme, publishes a breakdown of the cases it received. The categories follow the passenger rights rules.
Source: Consumer Dispute Resolution Limited (AviationADR), Annual Report for 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026, published 10 July 2026. Shares are AirAdvisor's calculation from 54,149 cases received.
Delays account for half of all cases, and claims for delay compensation alone made up a third (18,020 cases). Cancellations add another fifth. Lost and damaged bags barely register, with 5 cases: baggage claims fall under the Montreal Convention, a separate set of rules from Regulation 261. AviationADR reports a rise in disputes about fees charged at the gate for cabin bags that exceed the allowance. For the scale of the baggage problem itself, see our baggage mishandling statistics.
Germany: Flight Cases Dominate Travel Arbitration
Germany's Schlichtungsstelle Reise & Verkehr (SRUV), known until 2024 as the söp, handles disputes with airlines, rail companies and other transport operators. Flights make up more than four in five of its cases.
Source: Schlichtungsstelle Reise & Verkehr, Jahresbericht 2024 and Jahresbericht 2025; Kurzbilanz zum 1. Halbjahr 2026, 3 July 2026. The 2026 figure is rounded and covers January to June only.
Flight cases reached a record 38,338 in 2024, which SRUV links to strikes, extreme weather and IT outages such as the CrowdStrike failure. They eased to 34,828 in 2025, or 82.9% of all new cases. Then 2026 started with a surge: about 24,000 flight cases in the first six months alone, and total requests more than 50% above the first half of 2025. SRUV names weather, strikes and airspace restrictions linked to the wars in the Middle East, and adds that more travellers appear to be finding it through AI assistants. It expects a much higher total for 2026 than in any previous year.
Why German Passengers Go to Arbitration
SRUV records every complaint reason in each case, so the shares can add up to more than 100%. The comparison between 2024 and 2025 shows how much one disrupted year changes the mix.
Source: Schlichtungsstelle Reise & Verkehr, Jahresbericht 2025 (published March 2026) and Jahresbericht 2024. Multiple reasons per case are possible.
Cancellations and short-notice schedule changes were behind 66% of flight cases in 2024 but only 36% in 2025, which SRUV puts down to fewer exceptional events. Delays stayed steady at about a third of cases, and baggage problems edged up to 11%. Settlement is the usual outcome: SRUV says about 88% of its 2025 cases ended in agreement between passenger and company.
Delays vs Cancellations Across Europe
Complaint bodies classify cases differently, but the same two problems lead everywhere. This chart puts the latest available shares side by side.
Source: AviationADR Annual Report 2025/26; Irish Aviation Authority, Annual Report 2025; AESA figures for 2025 as reported by La Voz de Ibiza, 24 September 2026; Schlichtungsstelle Reise & Verkehr, Jahresbericht 2025. Shares are of all complaints at each body; Germany allows several reasons per case.
Delays account for roughly half of complaints in the UK, Ireland and Spain. Cancellations take a larger share in Ireland and Spain than at AviationADR, where more than a fifth of cases fall outside Regulation 261. Germany is the outlier, with cancellations ahead of delays even in a calmer year. A delay triggers EU or UK compensation only from three hours at arrival, and airlines can refuse payment if they prove extraordinary circumstances, which the IAA names as the main reason Irish complaints were not upheld. For how often flights actually run that late, see our flight delays in the EU and UK statistics.
National Complaint Bodies Compared
Each EU country has a national enforcement body for air passenger rights, and some also run or approve ADR schemes. Their published caseloads give a rough sense of scale, although definitions differ.
Source: UK Civil Aviation Authority; Schlichtungsstelle Reise & Verkehr, Jahresbericht 2025; AESA, Informe General de Actividad 2025; Irish Aviation Authority, Annual Report 2025; Luxembourg National Enforcement Body, as reported by Chronicle.lu, 15 July 2026. Figures cover calendar year 2025.
The UK and Germany each see tens of thousands of escalated cases a year. Spain's aviation safety agency, AESA, processed 30,097 passenger complaints in 2025: 18,397 through its binding ADR procedure and 11,700 older cases through its non-binding route, which it has now cleared. Press reports of AESA data put Iberia first for admitted ADR cases with 23.9% of the total. Ireland's IAA handled 2,883 complaints, upheld 1,213 and secured €1.13 million in compensation and refunds; it says most rejected cases failed because the airline proved extraordinary circumstances. Aer Lingus (31%) and Ryanair (28%) drew the most Irish complaints.
Consumer Centres and the US Comparison
Passengers with a complaint against an airline based in another EU country can also turn to the European Consumer Centres Network (ECC-Net). The network received more than 165,000 consumer contacts in 2025, 24% more than in 2024, and air travel was one of the two most common reasons, alongside online shopping. Air travel made up 34% of contacts at ECC Ireland and one in five at ECC Finland.
In the United States, the Department of Transportation received 97,906 consumer submissions about air travel in 2024, a measure that includes complaints, inquiries and opinions. The record remains 2020, with 102,560 complaints during the pandemic refund crisis. Our US airline complaints statistics break those figures down by airline.
In the EU, the revision of Regulation 261/2004 agreed in conciliation in June 2026 kept the three-hour delay threshold for compensation, according to the European Parliamentary Research Service.
References and Sources
- UK Civil Aviation Authority, UK passenger complaints data, quarterly files 2019 to Q2 2026 and FY25 and FY26 files, accessed 13 November 2026: caa.co.uk
- Consumer Dispute Resolution Limited (AviationADR), Annual Report, 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026, published 10 July 2026: aviationadr.org.uk
- Schlichtungsstelle Reise & Verkehr e.V., Jahresbericht 2025, March 2026: schlichtung-reise-und-verkehr.de
- Schlichtungsstelle Reise & Verkehr e.V., Jahresbericht 2024, March 2025: schlichtung-reise-und-verkehr.de
- Schlichtungsstelle Reise & Verkehr e.V., Kurzbilanz zum 1. Halbjahr 2026, 3 July 2026: schlichtung-reise-und-verkehr.de
- Irish Aviation Authority, Annual Report 2025: iaa.ie
- Irish Aviation Authority, Annual Report 2024: iaa.ie
- Agencia Estatal de Seguridad Aérea (AESA), Informe General de Actividad 2025: seguridadaerea.gob.es
- La Voz de Ibiza, AESA passenger complaint figures for 2025, 24 September 2026: lavozdeibiza.com
- Chronicle.lu, "National Enforcement Body recorded 789 air passenger complaints in 2025", 15 July 2026: chronicle.lu
- European Consumer Centre Finland, "Complaints increased at the ECC Finland in 2025", 13 February 2026: ecc.fi
- European Consumer Centre Ireland, Annual Report 2025, 25 August 2026: eccireland.ie
- US Department of Transportation, Air Travel Consumer Reports: transportation.gov
- European Parliamentary Research Service, air passenger rights revision, updated 30 June 2026: europarl.europa.eu
- Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council on air passenger rights: eur-lex.europa.eu
Methodology
This article counts complaints that passengers escalated to an official body after first complaining to the airline. It does not include complaints handled by airlines themselves, court claims or claims sent through private companies. All figures are historical; no forecasts are used. The latest data available on 13 November 2026 was used for each source.
UK annual totals are AirAdvisor's sum of the CAA's quarterly files for AviationADR (listed by the CAA as CDRL), CEDR and PACT, using the published total rows. Up to the third quarter of 2022 the CAA reported complaints received by category; from the fourth quarter of 2022 it reports total cases opened, which also counts cases awaiting categorisation. The CAA revised data for 2023 to 2025 on 14 May 2026 and describes its figures as a snapshot that can change. Airline comparisons and complaints per million passengers use the CAA's financial-year files (April to March), where the passenger base is UK departing passengers in the previous quarter. Air France-KLM is reported as one group. The AviationADR breakdown is AirAdvisor's grouping of the scheme's published categories: all delay, cancellation and denied boarding sub-categories are combined, and "other issues" covers complaints outside Regulation 261. AviationADR's 54,149 cases received include cases later rejected, so the figure is higher than the CAA's count of cases opened.
German figures are new flight-related requests to the Schlichtungsstelle Reise & Verkehr. SRUV changed its case system in October 2024 and says 2025 figures are not fully comparable with earlier years. The 2026 figure of about 24,000 is SRUV's rounded half-year total. Irish figures are complaints handled by the IAA, including cases carried over from earlier years (2,112 were new in 2025). Spain's 30,097 are complaints processed by AESA in 2025, including a backlog of older cases. The delay and cancellation shares for Spain come from AESA figures reported in the press (11,843 delay and 8,136 cancellation complaints out of 22,536 received). Because bodies define and count cases differently, cross-country comparisons show scale and pattern only. Percentages are rounded to one decimal place.
