Flight Delayed or Cancelled in India: What the Airline Owes You

The Directorate General of Civil Aviation sets passenger rights for every scheduled domestic carrier operating in India. These rules sit inside the Civil Aviation Requirements, Section 3, Series M, Part IV, a document airlines are required to display at check-in counters but rarely do. The rights it describes are not goodwill gestures. They are obligations, and they apply whether you booked directly with the airline or through an aggregator.

Three situations trigger compensation: a delay of two hours or more, a cancellation, and being denied boarding on a flight you held a confirmed ticket for, called involuntary denied boarding, which is the formal term for being bumped off an overbooked aircraft.


For a delay of two hours or more on a domestic route, the airline must provide meals and refreshments at the airport. This is not a voucher you have to ask for, it is supposed to be offered. If no one approaches you, walk to the airline's service desk and ask for it by name: meal entitlement under DGCA CAR Section 3, Series M, Part IV.


If the delay crosses 24 hours, the airline must arrange hotel accommodation and transfers if you are not at your home city. Keep every receipt regardless, because reimbursement disputes are common and receipts are your only evidence.


The rules do not set a cash compensation figure for delays the way European Union rules do. What they require is facilitation, meals, communication, accommodation at the threshold, not a cheque. Cash compensation kicks in at cancellation and denied boarding, not delay.

If an airline cancels a flight and gives you fewer than two weeks' notice, it must offer you a choice: a full refund, or an alternate flight at no extra charge. If you are informed at the airport on the day, the airline must also provide meals and, where the wait exceeds six hours, hotel accommodation.

The DGCA rules require the airline to inform passengers of cancellations at least two weeks in advance where possible. If they fail to do that, if you find out at the gate, you may also be entitled to compensation in the range of rupees two thousand to ten thousand depending on the flight distance, provided the airline cannot show the cancellation was caused by extraordinary circumstances such as severe weather, a security threat, or air traffic control restrictions. Force majeure cancels the compensation obligation, not the refund obligation. The refund is always yours.

Request the refund in writing at the airport before you leave. An email sent three days later is harder to enforce than a written request logged at the counter with a reference number.

Involuntary denied boarding, where you hold a confirmed ticket, checked in on time, and were still refused a seat because the airline oversold the flight, carries the clearest cash obligation in the DGCA framework.

If the airline arranges an alternate flight that gets you to your destination within one hour of the original arrival time, no compensation is triggered. If the alternate flight arrives between one and 24 hours late, the airline owes you 200 percent of the one-way basic fare plus fuel surcharge, subject to a ceiling of ten thousand rupees. If the delay exceeds 24 hours, that rises to 400 percent of the one-way basic fare plus fuel surcharge, subject to a ceiling of twenty thousand rupees.

These figures come from the DGCA's own schedule. Ask the airline agent to show you the denied boarding compensation form. If they say no such form exists, ask for a supervisor and note the time.

Most passengers lose compensation not because the rules are weak but because they leave the airport without a paper trail. Four steps before you go anywhere:

First, get the delay or cancellation in writing. A screenshot of the airline's app notification counts. An SMS from the airline counts. A verbal announcement from a gate agent does not.

Second, log your request at the airline's airport desk and take a reference number. If the desk refuses to log it, send an email to the airline's grievance address from the airport, timestamped.

Third, keep boarding passes, booking confirmations, and every receipt from the airport, food, transport, accommodation. The DGCA does not require airlines to compensate expenses beyond what the rules specify, but your credit card company or travel insurance may, and they will ask for documentation.

Fourth, if the airline does not respond within a month, file a complaint with the AirSewa portal, airsewa.gov.in, which is the DGCA's official passenger grievance platform. Consumer forums are the next step if AirSewa produces no resolution, and small claims through a consumer court have produced refund orders against carriers including IndiGo, Air India, and SpiceJet.

The rules exist. The airport is the only place where you have any leverage to use them.