Extraordinary Circumstances Under EU 261 — When the Airline Can Say No in Poland

Extraordinary circumstances is the narrow legal exception in Article 5(3) of EU Regulation 261/2004 that frees an airline from paying the €250–€600 fixed compensation — but only when an event lay genuinely outside its control and could not have been avoided even with all reasonable measures. It is the line LOT, Wizz Air, Ryanair and every other carrier reach for when they refuse a claim. It is also the line passengers most often accept without testing, because the email sounds final. It is not. The Court of Justice of the European Union reads the exception strictly, the burden of proof sits with the airline, and in Poland you have ten years under Article 118 of the Polish Civil Code (Kodeks cywilny) to take the matter to the Rzecznik Praw Pasażerów (RPP) at the ULC (Urząd Lotnictwa Cywilnego) or to a civil lawsuit before the Sąd Rejonowy. Polish version of this guide: okoliczności nadzwyczajne — EU 261 .

What the exception really means — and what it does not

The phrase "extraordinary circumstances" appears in Article 5(3) of EU 261/2004 without an exhaustive definition. The legislator left the line for the Court to draw, and over twenty years the Court has drawn it tightly. Two conditions must be met at the same time for the defence to hold:

1. The event lay outside the airline’s normal activity and actual control. Anything the airline controls, or anything that belongs to ordinary operations — fleet maintenance, crew rosters, ground handling contracts — does not qualify.
2. The delay could not have been avoided even if the airline had taken all reasonable measures. That something happened is not enough. The airline must also show it had no realistic way to work around it — by swapping aircraft, calling in standby crew, accepting a re-routing partner, or pre-positioning a spare.

A decisive detail the airline rarely mentions in the rejection email: the burden of proof is on the carrier. It is the airline that must show both conditions are met, with documents. A METAR weather observation, a NOTAM, an inspection report, a Eurocontrol slot record. A formulation along the lines of "an event beyond our control occurred" is not legal proof — it is a piece of customer-service language, and one you can and should challenge.

Compensation is also separate from the refund. An extraordinary circumstance can remove your right to the €250–€600, but it never removes your right to a refund of the ticket if you choose not to be re-routed. And it never removes the airline’s duty of care: meals, drinks, communication and, if the wait stretches overnight, a hotel and transport. We come back to that below.

A clear verdict per cause

Most claims are decided by a single question — what caused the disruption. The table below sets the main rule for each common cause. The word "depends" in the third column is not a hedge; it is exactly where most real cases turn, because nearly every cause has a counter-argument the airline hopes you will not notice.

The rest of this guide takes each row in turn, with the CJEU cases that govern it and the way the rule lands for a passenger flying from Warsaw, Kraków, Gdańsk, Wrocław, Katowice or any other Polish airport. If you want to test your particular flight in seconds, our eligibility checker for flight compensation walks you through the same logic in a guided form.

Technical fault — almost always claimable

This is the cause airlines invoke wrongly more often than any other. The common intuition — "the plane broke down, so it was beyond the airline’s control" — is the opposite of the legal position. In Wallentin-Hermann (C-549/07, 2008) the Court ruled that technical problems detected during ordinary maintenance, or caused by inadequate maintenance, belong to an airline’s ordinary activity. Keeping a fleet airworthy is the very core of running an airline. A routine engine fault, a broken component, a hydraulic leak, an APU failure, a brake issue, an avionics bug — that sort of thing is generally not extraordinary, and you are entitled to the €250–€600.

The Court tightened this further in van der Lans (C-257/14, 2015). The case concerned a spontaneous failure of a part that had not yet reached the end of its service life. The airline argued that an unforeseeable malfunction during normal operation should count as extraordinary. The Court disagreed: the premature failure of a component is a hazard inherent in flying aircraft and falls within the carrier’s ordinary activity. The bar is even higher than Wallentin-Hermann had already drawn.

The narrow real exception does exist — a hidden manufacturing defect that even the manufacturer missed and that has been flagged by the certifying authority (EASA, FAA), or sabotage. But it is exactly that — narrow. The carrier has the burden of producing the EASA airworthiness directive or the police report. "Technical problem" without a document is not enough.

Practical effect for Polish passengers: if a LOT Embraer at Warsaw Chopin or a Wizz Air A321 at Katowice goes tech and the delay reaches three hours at your final destination, the starting position is that the €250, €400 or €600 is owed. If the rejection letter says "technical fault" and stops there, the Rzecznik Praw Pasażerów at the ULC will almost certainly side with you, and so will the Sąd Rejonowy.

Weather — usually extraordinary, but the airline still has to behave

Severe weather — a winter storm at Warsaw Chopin, dense fog at Gdańsk, a thunderstorm cell over Kraków-Balice — normally counts as an extraordinary circumstance. An airline does not control the weather, and the fixed compensation then often falls away. So far, so intuitive.

The careful question is whether the delay really was caused by the weather, or whether weather is just the convenient label on a failure that was the airline’s own. Three diagnostic questions decide it:

• Did other carriers depart in the same conditions? If easyJet and Ryanair flew out of WAW within the relevant window while LOT cancelled, "weather" no longer holds as a complete answer.
• Was the hold-up really about the runway, or about the airline’s lack of de-icing capacity? De-icing arrangements are part of the carrier’s ground handling contract. A queue caused by an under-staffed ground handler is not a force majeure.
• Was the crew already out of duty time for unrelated reasons? If the storm gave the aircraft an hour and crew planning then added four more, only the first hour is properly "weather".

A METAR reading and a NOTAM are not optional pieces of evidence here — they are exactly what the airline should put in front of the RPP if it wants the defence to hold. If the rejection email cites "weather" with no documents, write back and ask for the METAR and the NOTAM. If they cannot be produced, the defence does not hold and you can escalate.

Strike — the answer depends on whose strike

Strike is the cause where the answer varies most and where airline letters most often mislead. The rule of thumb runs counter to lay intuition:

• A strike among the airline’s own staff — pilots, cabin crew, mechanics — usually does NOT count as extraordinary. Labour relations are part of the airline’s ordinary activity, so the fixed compensation is normally owed. The Court drew this line for unannounced "wildcat" action in Krüsemann (C-195/17, 2018), after the TUIfly mass sickie of 2016, and the reasoning extends to formally announced strikes too. The airline could have negotiated, could have prepared contingencies, could have used wet-leased aircraft.
• A strike by air traffic controllers, airport ground handlers, security staff or border police — outside the carrier’s control — usually IS extraordinary. A French ATC walk-out that closes a transit corridor to Madrid, a Lufthansa-handling strike at Munich that catches a LOT connection, an Italian airport handler dispute that blocks Rome — these typically remove the cash compensation. But the airline must still document the strike (with the formal notice) and show it took reasonable measures to limit the knock-on delay.

In practice, a Polish passenger should pay close attention to whose strike caused the cancellation. A "strike" rejection from a Polish carrier where the strikers turned out to be its own crew is almost always overturned by the Rzecznik Praw Pasażerów.

Bird strike, ATC restrictions and other outside events

A bird strike counts as an extraordinary circumstance. The Court settled the question explicitly in Pešková (C-315/15, 2017): a collision between an aircraft and a bird lies outside an airline’s normal activity and outside its actual control. The collision itself therefore does not normally trigger the €250–€600.

But the same judgment says more — and this is where many bird-strike claims are quietly won. The airline must still show that it took reasonable measures to limit the delay afterwards. If the post-incident inspection took six hours because the airline lacked maintenance staff at Warsaw and had to wait for an engineer to be flown in from Munich, that extra time is about the carrier’s organisation, not about the bird. That part of the delay may still be claimable. A two-part assessment of the same flight is normal.

Air-traffic-control restrictions — airspace congestion, slot delays, capacity reductions — normally lie outside the airline’s control and usually give no compensation. The same applies to security alerts, runway closures for emergency landings of other aircraft and similar outside events. Even here the requirement holds: the airline must show it took reasonable measures to limit the effect. A Eurocontrol slot record is the document to ask for.

A useful internal cross-reference: if your delay was caused by a missed connection after an outside event, the rules in missed connection compensation interact with the question of cause on the first leg.

Edge cases — when the cause is not clean

The genuine difficulty rarely sits in a single cause. It sits in cases where several things happened at once, or where an extraordinary event had consequences that were the airline’s own responsibility. Three patterns are worth recognising, because they sit at the heart of disputes the Rzecznik Praw Pasażerów has to resolve every week:

• The stacked cause. A thunderstorm gave the aircraft an hour’s delay at Warsaw. That hour was enough for the crew to later hit their FDP limit, which added four more hours. The weather was extraordinary — but crew planning is the airline’s responsibility, and the whole delay is then not automatically exempt. Only the first hour is properly weather.
• The knock-on effect from an earlier flight. Your aircraft was delayed on the WAW→KRK leg because that same airframe ran late on a Lisbon turn. The Court has been clear: an extraordinary event that hit an earlier flight does not automatically make your delay extraordinary. The airline must show it could not have rescheduled the rotation to protect your particular departure.
• The slow recovery. A bird strike or a brief ATC restriction happened — but the delay grew far longer than necessary because the airline had no backup plan, no spare crew, no replacement aircraft. That extra time is about the airline’s organisation, not the original event.

What the three patterns share: it is not enough for the airline to point to an extraordinary event somewhere in the chain. The carrier must show it took all reasonable measures to limit the delay — and if it could have done more, the defence does not hold all the way. If you recognise your own case in one of those patterns, an initial "no" is far from the final word.

The duty of care never falls away

This is the point that offsets every cause in the table above, and it is almost always forgotten in airline emails. Even when an extraordinary circumstance frees the carrier from paying the cash compensation, the duty of care under Article 9 EU 261 remains. The Court underlined this in McDonagh (C-12/11, 2013): the eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in 2010 was extraordinary, yet the carrier still owed care for as long as passengers were stranded.

The duty of care means the airline must look after you while you wait: meals and drinks in reasonable quantity relative to the waiting time, two free phone calls or emails, and — for a delay overnight — a hotel and transport to and from the hotel. The right is tied to the disruption itself, not to the cause. A storm at Warsaw can remove your €400 — but it does not remove the airline’s duty to put food in front of you and a roof over your head. If you are stranded at Chopin or Balice and the airline points to "force majeure" to escape all responsibility, that is wrong: the duty of care applies anyway. Our full guide on the right to care, meals and a hotel during a flight delay walks through the practical claims.

If the airline does not honour the duty of care on the spot, you keep the receipts, pay yourself, and claim the reimbursement afterwards. Reasonable hotels, reasonable meals, taxis when public transport is gone — the standard is necessity in the circumstances, not the cheapest possible bed.

When the airline invokes the exception — what to do in Poland

If you receive a refusal citing extraordinary circumstances, treat it as a starting point, not a final verdict. Five concrete steps, in order:

1. Ask for a specific written explanation. "Event beyond our control" is not an answer. Ask what concretely happened, on what date and at what airport, and why it could not be avoided. Cite the burden of proof from Article 5(3) and the CJEU case law.
2. Test the cause against the main rule. If the cause is a technical fault, the default position is that you are entitled to compensation. If it is weather, ask whether other carriers operated in the same window. If it is a strike, ask whose strike it was.
3. Ask for the underlying documents. A METAR or NOTAM for weather. An EASA airworthiness directive for a manufacturing defect. A Eurocontrol slot record for an ATC restriction. A formal strike notice for an outside-strike defence. If the airline cannot produce them, the defence is on weak ground.
4. File with the Rzecznik Praw Pasażerów at the ULC. The complaint is free, in writing or online, and triggers a formal administrative opinion against the carrier. The RPP opinion is influential evidence in any later court case and the airline knows it.
5. Escalate to the Sąd Rejonowy if needed. The civil suit goes either to the court with jurisdiction over the airline’s registered office or, per Rehder (C-204/08, 2009), to the airport of departure or arrival. For Polish departures that often means the Sąd Rejonowy for Warsaw, Kraków or Gdańsk. The simplified procedure (postępowanie uproszczone) applies and the court fee for claims under €600 is modest. You have ten years under Article 118 of the Polish Civil Code, as confirmed for EU 261 claims in Cuadrench Moré (C-139/11, 2013).

If you would rather hand the file to a specialist on a no-win-no-fee basis, the leading service that pursues EU 261 claims on behalf of Polish passengers is reviewed in our guide on how to claim flight compensation — yourself or via a service . A direct shortcut to start a claim now:

Check your flight with AirHelp — no win, no fee

This is not legal advice

This page is built on published EU and Polish sources — Regulation 261/2004, CJEU case law and the Polish Civil Code — and reflects the position as understood in June 2026. Expert legal review on a specific case has not been carried out here. For advice on your individual situation, contact the Rzecznik Praw Pasażerów at the Urząd Lotnictwa Cywilnego, the supervising authority for air passenger rights in Poland, or a Polish-qualified lawyer. The general information here does not replace an individual assessment, and CJEU case law on extraordinary circumstances continues to develop — the 2026 reform proposal for Regulation 261 may, when finally adopted, adjust how the exception is worded.

Sources

• EUR-Lex — Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 , in particular Article 5(3)
• Court of Justice of the EU — Wallentin-Hermann (C-549/07, 2008), van der Lans (C-257/14, 2015), Pešková (C-315/15, 2017), Krüsemann (C-195/17, 2018), McDonagh (C-12/11, 2013), Cuadrench Moré (C-139/11, 2013)
• Urząd Lotnictwa Cywilnego — Rzecznik Praw Pasażerów (the Polish supervising authority for air passenger rights)
• Polish Civil Code (Kodeks cywilny) — Article 118 (general ten-year prescription period for civil claims)

Last reviewed: 2 June 2026.