A flight landing two hours late does not, in itself, create a late transfer. It creates a shift. And a shift is manageable, provided you know who is tracking what, from which data, and what the airline owes you in the meantime. These are two separate mechanisms: the flight, framed by a European regulation, and the transfer, which is a matter of organisation. Confusing the two is the first source of bad surprises.
Two clocks measuring different things
The contract binding you to the airline is about a scheduled departure time and a scheduled arrival time. The transfer should never be organised around a time: it is organised around a flight number.
The distinction sounds abstract. In practice it settles almost everything. A transfer booking set to a fixed time becomes wrong the second the aircraft moves, and you then have to warn someone, hope the message arrives, hope the chauffeur is still available. A booking indexed to a flight number resets itself: the real landing time replaces the scheduled one, and the pick-up follows without you having to do anything.
At Novalia the flight number drives everything. It is asked for at booking for that reason, and for one more: it also determines the arrival terminal, and with it the meeting point.
How flight tracking works
Tracking relies on the position and schedule data published for every commercial flight. In practice, three moments count.
- The day before and the morning of the flight, the published status allows a shift announced in advance to be anticipated and the pick-up moved before the chauffeur even sets off.
- At take-off, the actual departure time gives a far more reliable arrival estimate than the scheduled one.
- On landing, the touchdown time starts the countdown of the waiting time on site.
That last step deserves a clarification, because it is the source of most misunderstandings. An aircraft touching the runway is not a passenger walking out. Between touchdown and the arrivals hall come taxiing, docking the airbridge or the bus transfer, disembarking, possibly border control, then baggage delivery. On a long-haul flight, the gap between landing and leaving frequently exceeds an hour.
That is why Novalia includes 60 minutes of waiting after landing, and not after the scheduled arrival time: the count starts from the moment the aircraft actually touched down. At an address, where there is neither customs nor a baggage belt, the waiting time included is 15 minutes.
What European Regulation 261/2004 covers
The regulation applies to any flight departing from an airport in the European Union, whatever the airline, and to flights to the Union operated by a Union carrier. It sets out two rights that should not be confused: care and compensation.
Care, immediate and regardless of fault
As soon as the delay at departure reaches a threshold set by the flight distance, the airline must provide, free of charge, refreshments, meals in proportion to the waiting time, and two communications — calls or emails. If the wait means a night on site, it must provide accommodation and the journeys between airport and hotel. This right applies even when the delay is due to extraordinary circumstances.
Beyond five hours of delay, you may abandon the journey and ask for the ticket to be refunded.
The fixed compensation
It is triggered by a different criterion: the delay recorded on arrival at the final destination, from three hours. The amounts are fixed and depend on the distance.
| Flight distance | Threshold that opens the right to care | Compensation from 3 h of delay on arrival |
|---|---|---|
| 1,500 km or less | 2 hours | €250 |
| More than 1,500 km within the Union, or 1,500 to 3,500 km | 3 hours | €400 |
| More than 3,500 km outside the Union | 4 hours | €600, reduced to €300 if the delay on arrival stays under 4 hours |
The airline is released from the compensation — and from that alone — if the delay is due to extraordinary circumstances it could not have avoided by taking reasonable measures.
Cancelled flight, flight brought forward
If a flight is cancelled, the airline must offer you a choice: a refund of the ticket within seven days, re-routing to the final destination at the earliest opportunity, or re-routing at a later date that suits you. The fixed compensation follows the same scale as for delay, unless you were informed at least fourteen days before the scheduled departure, or a close re-routing was offered to you on the terms set by the regulation.
A flight brought forward is the most treacherous case, because it does not look like an incident. A schedule moved two hours earlier, announced in an email read too quickly, turns into a missed flight. On the transfer side the reflex is the same as for a delay: report the new flight number or the new time as soon as the message arrives.
What to take away. Regulation 261/2004 protects your air journey. It says nothing about your transfer. The two connect through a single piece of data: the flight number.
What to do, in order
- Keep everything. Boarding pass, ticket, emails from the airline, receipts for meals and hotel. Without those documents, no claim succeeds.
- Ask for care on the spot, at the airline desk. If it is not provided, pay and keep the receipts: reasonable expenses are recoverable.
- Check the delay on arrival, not at departure. That is what opens the right to compensation.
- Tell your chauffeur if you change flight. A delay, by contrast, calls for nothing at all when tracking is in place.
- Send a written claim to the airline. It is a compulsory step before any further action.
If the airline does not reply
After a claim left without a satisfactory answer for two months, you may report the dispute to the Direction générale de l’aviation civile, designated as the national body responsible for enforcing the regulation in France. The DGAC cannot force an airline to pay you the compensation, but it can impose administrative penalties, and its involvement often unblocks a case. Court action, for its part, is time-barred five years after the flight.
And on the transfer side
A well-built transfer absorbs the uncertainty of the flight without any action from you: real-time flight tracking, meet and greet in the arrivals hall, included waiting time set by the actual landing. The price does not move: it is fixed and known before payment, tolls and VAT included, whether it is eight in the evening or two in the morning. And if your trip falls through well in advance, cancellation is free up to 24 hours before the pick-up.
A question about a particular flight, a tight connection, several arrivals to coordinate: contact@novaliafleet.com.
Sources
Every figure in this article comes from one of these sources, consulted on 18 September 2026. Dates and fares published by third parties may change without notice.
- EUR-Lex — Regulation (EC) No 261/2004
- DGAC — air passenger rights, information
- Ministère de la Transition écologique — delay, cancellation, denied boarding (2026 leaflet)
- Ministère de la Transition écologique — what to do in case of delay or cancellation
- DGCCRF — travelling by air: what rights passengers have
- European Commission — Your Europe, air passenger rights
