The European Union Approves the Reform of Regulation (EC) No. 261/2004 and the Legal Framework for Passenger Air Transport
INFORMATION ALERT: October 5th, 2026
By Jaime Fernandez and Manuel Gallego, Augusta Abogados
After more than a decade of institutional negotiations, the long-awaited reform of Regulation (EC) No. 261/2004 -concerning air passengers’ rights in the event of denied boarding, flight cancellations, and long flight delays- as well as Regulation (EC) No. 2027/97, on the liability of air carriers regarding the carriage of passengers and baggage, through Regulation (EU) 2026/2202 of September 16, 2026. The reform enters into force 20 days after its publication, becoming part of Union law, although it provides for a transitional period for adaptation prior to its full implementation on October 23, 2027, thereby granting operators a specific timeframe to bring their procedures, systems, and commercial policies into compliance. The official text of the published regulation can be found at the following link: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=OJ:L_202602202
The main objective of the reform is to revise and update various fundamental aspects of Regulation (EC) No. 261/2004, incorporating into the regulatory text itself interpretive solutions that, for more than twenty years, had been developed primarily through the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union and through administrative enforcement criteria that were not always uniform.
However, the reform goes far beyond a mere revision of the compensation and assistance regime for passengers. The European legislature has taken advantage of this initiative to regulate, for the first time in an explicit and uniform manner throughout the European Union, various particularly relevant issues concerning air passenger transport contracts, which until now lacked specific regulation and had given rise to significant interpretive disputes among operators, national authorities, and courts.
In this regard, the reform aims to strengthen legal certainty and regulatory uniformity in matters essential to the operation of commercial air transport, reducing the existing fragmentation among Member States and providing a common regulatory framework for passengers, airlines, national authorities, and courts.
We view the European legislator’s willingness to incorporate into the regulatory text solutions that until now depended largely on case law developments and scattered interpretive criteria as positive for the aviation sector. The reform provides greater regulatory predictability in areas particularly relevant to airlines’ operations and contributes to a more uniform application of the rules throughout the European Union.
Notwithstanding the foregoing, it is also regrettable that the reform has missed the opportunity to offer more ambitious solutions to some of the issues that, in recent years, have caused the greatest operational difficulties and led to higher levels of litigation for air carriers. In particular, certain issues related to the operational management of incidents, the scope of airlines’ liability regime, and the high costs associated with ongoing disputes continue to lack a fully satisfactory regulatory response.