EU revises cabin luggage, flight compensation rules

A legislative wrangle lasting more than a decade has finally been settled after the European Council and the European Parliament agreed to revise rules over air passenger delay compensation and free cabin luggage.

The updated regulations will require all airlines and selling agents to be transparent about details including baggage costs from the start of the booking process, rather than advertising enticing prices that are increased later.

Carriers will be allowed to offer cheaper tickets to passengers who travel without hand luggage. And compensation for flight cancellation or delays of more than three hours, a threshold that some carriers wanted to see raised, has been revised to change the rules for longer-distance flights.

The overhaul of existing rules, which were introduced in 2004, began in 2013, and the new measures will take effect from next year.

The international travel market in 2004 was entirely different to how it is now, and those original measures have long been regarded as unfit for the modern era, particularly with regard to the growth of budget airlines, some of which have recently started to charge for cabin luggage, citing the economic consequences of the Iran war.

"(In 2004) Ryanair (Europe's biggest budget airline) carried roughly 23 million passengers per year. In 2024, it carried over 183 million — nearly eight times more," said Virginijus Sinkevicius, a Lithuanian member of the European Parliament for the Green Party. "Wizz Air did not yet exist. EasyJet was a niche operator. Low-cost carriers now represent a dominant share of intra-European aviation, and they have built business models specifically around unbundling services that were once standard and charging separately for each one."

Alexis Vafeades, the transport minister of Cyprus, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, welcomed the settling of the long-running dispute.

"This modernized framework will deliver certainty, fairness and stronger protection for millions of European air passengers," he said. "The agreement strikes a fair balance for our airlines, helping preserve connectivity that is vital to the EU's internal market and its citizens."

Another issue to have been resolved is a guarantee that seats for minor children next to their parents can be reserved free of charge. This comes in the same week that the United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority said it was going to investigate the legality of charges for this being imposed by Ryanair, which according to its CEO Michael O'Leary, carried 208 million passengers in 2025.

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