How much compensation for a delayed Air China flight?
£520 each, if you land 3 hours or more late
Check your flight
FreePick your airports and the date you flew. We'll list every flight on that route that day.
A few quick questions. No personal details needed.
Air China is about average for the 80 airlines flying at UK airports for 3-hour delays.
- Flights a year
- 3,022
- Landed on time
- 83.1%
- Land 3 hrs or more late
- 15a year
Last 12 months, CAA data
What you're owed
Every Air China route we hold a distance for falls in the same band, so that is the figure. About 15 Air China flights a year cross that line.
What it pays
Pick the airport you flew from
Air China flies from 2 UK airports, so there is no single distance and no single figure. Open the one you flew from and every destination is priced.
Watch my flight
Flying soon? We'll watch your flight
If it lands 3 hours or more late we email you what you're owed.
How bad is it
Does Air China get delayed a lot?
Not especially. It's about average for the 80 airlines flying at UK airports, with about 1 flight in 200 landing 3 or more hours late (0.5%).
That works out at about 15 flights a year crossing the 3-hour line, which is the point the airline has to pay.
When is it worst?
November 2025, when Air China flights ran an average of 15 minutes late.
See all the numbers for Air China
In the last 12 months, Air China operated 3,022 flights at UK airports, and 0.5% were 3 or more hours late, the threshold where £520 each becomes payable.
Flights are landing on time more often than last year: 83.1% ran on time against 81.3% in the twelve months before, and the average delay fell from 10.2 to 9.3 minutes.
| Air China, last 12 months | Figure | vs year before |
|---|---|---|
| Flights at UK airports | 3,022 | was 2,840 |
| Ran on time (within 15 min) | 83.1% | ▲ was 81.3% |
| Average delay | 9.3 min | ▼ was 10.2 min |
| 3 hours or more late (the line where they pay) | 0.5% | - |
| Cancelled | 0.1% | - |
| Flights 3 hours or more late (a year) | 15 flights/year | - |
The CAA's figures combine arrivals and departures, so this covers both directions of travel.
Air China's delays, month by month
Worst month: November 2025, averaging 15 minutes.
Where it flies
Air China at each UK airport
How to claim
Claiming from Air China
Airlines rarely pay compensation on their own. Nothing happens until someone claims, and plenty of first claims come back refused when the airline blames something outside its control.
The rules do not change with the airline. What decides your claim is where the flight took off and how late it landed, not whose aircraft it was.
Your rights
What the rules turn on
Where the flight departed decides everything, not the airline's nationality. Anything leaving a UK airport is covered by UK261 whoever operates it, and anything leaving the EU by EU261. A delay of 3 or more hours on arrival pays £520 each on the distances Air China flies, when the cause was within the airline's control, which covers technical faults, crew shortages and the knock-on from a late inbound aircraft. It pays nothing when the cause was genuinely extraordinary, though airlines stretch that word further than the case law supports, so a refusal on those grounds is worth testing rather than accepting.
Other airlines
Source: UK Civil Aviation Authority punctuality statistics, July 2025 to June 2026. Analysis by CheckFlightCompensation; the CAA is credited as the data source as its publication conditions require. Figures cover the 25 largest UK airports. Methodology and limitations.