# Aberdeen Airport delays: £220–£520 under UK261 Source: https://airtravelrights.com/airports/aberdeen/ > UK261 compensation is owed by the operating airline, never Aberdeen Airport. CAA 2025: 3.40% of flights cancelled with under 24 hours'' notice. # Aberdeen Airport: flight delay and cancellation rights Aberdeen Airport serves the North Sea energy sector and connects the Scottish islands, a traffic mix none of the other airports on this site shares. The CAA matched 27,264 flights there in 2025 and, separately, logged 3.40% of flights as cancelled with less than 24 hours' notice. A cancellation, or an arrival three hours or more late, puts [UK261](https://airtravelrights.com/uk261/)'s £220 to £520 on the operating airline, never on Aberdeen Airport, unless unavoidable extraordinary circumstances caused it. ## Which rules cover delayed flights departing Aberdeen Airport? Article 3(1)(a) of UK261 covers every flight leaving Aberdeen Airport, on any airline, from a short Loganair hop to Shetland to a long scheduled route south. Aberdeen Airport delay compensation always comes from that airline, never the airport. A flight arriving here from abroad qualifies only if a UK or EU-licensed carrier operated it. UK261 also reaches Aberdeen-bound flights from abroad, but only where a UK air carrier or a Community carrier operated the flight. Passengers who already received benefits or compensation and assistance in the country they left are excluded from that inbound rule. Loganair and British Airways, through BA CityFlyer, both hold UK operating licences only, so their Aberdeen flights stay in pounds under UK261 alone; neither is a Community carrier. A domestic hop to Sumburgh, Kirkwall or Stornoway never touches EU261 at all, since it neither departs nor lands in the EU. If a Community (EU-licensed) carrier does fly an Aberdeen departure into the EU, EU261 covers that flight in euros — the exception is when you already received benefits or compensation and assistance in the UK. Check the operating carrier on your ticket, not the route, before assuming which currency applies. Source: UK261 arts. 3(1)(a) and 3(1)(b) - legislation.gov.uk; EU261 art. 3(1)(b) - eur-lex.europa.eu, checked 2026-09-18. ## How much is due for a delayed flight from Aberdeen Airport? £220 up to 1,500 km, £350 between 1,500 and 3,500 km, and £520 beyond that: those are the [UK261 amounts](https://airtravelrights.com/uk261/flight-delay-compensation/) once an Aberdeen departure lands three hours or more late, unless unavoidable extraordinary circumstances caused it. A short island hop to Shetland sits in the lowest band; a longer charter south to Spain sits in the middle one. Take a Loganair flight from Aberdeen to Sumburgh, on Shetland, delayed by a technical fault. At around 250 km, it sits in the £220 band once the delay reaches three hours or more at the final gate. A charter from Aberdeen to Malaga covers roughly 2,400 km, so the same three-hour rule pays £350 instead, the middle band. Two hours 59 minutes late earns nothing on either route. At three hours 0 minutes, the full amount is due. Cancellation runs on notice, not on distance: two weeks or more rules out compensation outright, and shorter notice needs re-routing inside strict time windows before the airline avoids paying at all. Article 5(4) puts the burden of proving when it told you on the airline. Unavoidable extraordinary circumstances remove the fixed payment, never the airline's duty of care while you wait. Source: UK261 arts. 5(4) and 7(1) - legislation.gov.uk; CAA, Delays - caa.co.uk, checked 2026-09-18. ## How often do flights at Aberdeen Airport actually run late? 70.4% of the 27,264 flights the Civil Aviation Authority matched at Aberdeen Airport in 2025 arrived within 15 minutes of schedule, and the average delay was 10.8 minutes, shorter than [Heathrow](https://airtravelrights.com/airports/heathrow/)'s 12.8-minute average across 475,582 matched flights. Separately, 3.40% of flights were cancelled with less than 24 hours' notice. These are CAA statistics, not a UK261 compensation test. Add the CAA's two published bands together — 15 minutes early to 1 minute early, and 0 to 15 minutes late — and that is exactly how the 70.4% figure is built. The CAA file records no cause code for any of Aberdeen's cancellations, so this page cannot explain the 3.40%. [Teesside International](https://airtravelrights.com/airports/teesside/) logged 3.85% in the same file. All-cargo, oil rig, air taxi, positioning, private and military flights are excluded from the whole file regardless, so offshore helicopter movements never appear here. The CAA measures runway and gate times, never the doors-open arrival moment UK261 counts, so none of these figures is a legal threshold. The regulator gives no warranty as to accuracy or reliability. Check your own flight's arrival time, not Aberdeen's yearly average, before deciding whether compensation is due. Source: UK Civil Aviation Authority, 2025 Annual Punctuality Statistics Summary Analysis - caa.co.uk, checked 2026-09-18. ## Where do you complain after a disrupted Aberdeen Airport flight? 8 weeks with no reply to a written complaint lets you take a UK261 dispute to free alternative dispute resolution. [British Airways](https://airtravelrights.com/airlines/british-airways/), through BA CityFlyer, is a CEDR member. [Loganair](https://airtravelrights.com/airlines/loganair/) sits on none of the three lists — the CAA's ADR list, AviationADR's members list or CEDR's subscriber list — so its disputes go to the CAA's complaints team instead. PACT can take up a valid complaint against Loganair. It cannot force a payout, though, and it will not open a file with less than a year left to sue. An ADR decision British Airways accepts becomes binding on it; if the airline still refuses to pay, [see what to do next](https://airtravelrights.com/airline-refused-compensation/). If you sue over an Aberdeen flight in a Scottish court, the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973 gives [five years, not six](https://airtravelrights.com/flight-compensation-time-limits/), under Schedule 1, running from when the claim arose. Whether a Scottish court instead applies the six-year rule that UK261 article 3(9) points to for England and Wales has not been settled by any Scottish judgment found for this page. Treat five years as your safer cut-off, and put your complaint in writing well before it runs out; the same question follows [Glasgow](https://airtravelrights.com/airports/glasgow/) and Scotland's other [airports](https://airtravelrights.com/airports/). Source: Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973, Sch. 1 - legislation.gov.uk, checked 2026-09-18. General information, not legal advice. For your specific case: the CAA, Citizens Advice or a solicitor. ## Sources - Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 as it forms part of UK law, arts. 2, 3, 5 and 7 - [legislation.gov.uk](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/eur/2004/261/contents), checked 2026-09-15. - Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 (EU text), art. 3 - [eur-lex.europa.eu](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32004R0261), checked 2026-09-15. - Civil Aviation Authority, Delays and Cancellations - [caa.co.uk](https://www.caa.co.uk/air-passengers/travel-problems-and-rights/flight-delays-and-cancellations/delays/), checked 2026-09-15. - Civil Aviation Authority, Alternative dispute resolution and PACT - [caa.co.uk](https://www.caa.co.uk/air-passengers/travel-problems-and-rights/travel-complaints/how-the-caa-can-help/), checked 2026-09-15. - Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973, Sch. 1 - [legislation.gov.uk](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1973/52/section/6), checked 2026-09-15. - UK Civil Aviation Authority, 2025 Annual Punctuality Statistics Summary Analysis - [caa.co.uk](https://www.caa.co.uk/Documents/Download/24022/3d82eddc-84f7-4692-bc12-a9ab96562d04/1712), checked 2026-09-18. - Civil Aviation Authority, airline licence holders - [caa.co.uk](https://www.caa.co.uk/commercial-industry/airlines/licensing/licence-types/airline-licence-holders/), checked 2026-09-18.