The rules focus on when you actually landed at your final destination — not which specific leg was delayed.
If your connecting flights were part of a single booking, what matters for compensation is your delay on arrival at your final destination — not how late any one individual leg was. So if a short delay on your first flight causes you to miss your connection and you arrive 3+ hours late overall, you can generally still claim, even if neither leg on its own looked like a 3-hour delay. If the two flights were booked completely separately, though, the rules generally treat them as two independent trips.
This is the single biggest factor in how a missed connection gets assessed.
If you booked your journey as one reservation — a single ticket or itinerary covering both flights, checked in through to your final destination — the airline is generally responsible for getting you there, including managing the connection. If an earlier delay causes you to miss the connecting flight, the airline typically has to rebook you and provide care (meals, communication, accommodation if needed) while you wait, and the disruption is assessed based on your total delay to final arrival.
A significant piece of case law on this point involved a passenger connecting through a hub whose overall journey was delayed by more than three hours at final arrival, even though the first leg itself was delayed by less than that. The Court of Justice of the EU held that what counts is the delay experienced at the final destination of a single booking, not the delay on each individual segment — reinforcing that connecting itineraries should be looked at as one journey.
If you booked two independent tickets — say, a budget carrier for the first leg and a different airline for the second, with no through check-in — each flight is generally treated as its own separate contract. If your first flight is delayed and you miss your independently-booked second flight as a result, that missed second flight typically isn't something you can claim against either airline under EU261/UK261, because from the airlines' point of view, they weren't responsible for connecting you. You may still have a claim against the first airline for its own delay, calculated on that flight alone.
For a single through-booking, EU261/UK261 coverage generally follows the same logic as any other flight: it depends on where the itinerary as a whole departs and lands, and which airline(s) operated it — not on which specific airport the connection happened at.
If you booked each flight as a separate, standalone reservation (a "self-connect"), each flight is generally assessed on its own under EU261/UK261, and a delay on the first flight causing you to miss the second usually isn't something you can claim against the airline for the missed second leg.
What generally matters most is whether both flights were part of a single booking with a through check-in to your final destination, rather than which airline operated each leg.
If the connection time booked met the airline's own minimum requirements and you still missed it because an earlier leg was delayed, that generally strengthens your case that the airline's own delay caused the missed connection.
Generally yes, if the missed connection was part of a single booking — the airline typically owes you care (meals, communication, and accommodation if you're stuck overnight) regardless of whether the delay also ends up qualifying for compensation.
Tell us about your booking and we'll work out whether you have a claim.