If you have already made a written complaint to an airline or airport, and you are not satisfied with the outcome, the CAA may be able to help.

Please be aware, due to the recent Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ruling which has extended passenger rights for certain delayed flights, we are receiving a significant increase in demand for our services.This has meant our response is likely to be slower than we would like.  We do apologise for this.  Please look at our advice on making a complaint and make sure you have written to the company first and provided all the relevant information.   We assure you that your complaint does matter to us and we will answer as soon as we can.

Your personal data

We will always endeavour to ensure that enquiries involving sensitive personal data about you or another person are handled with care and in accordance with our data protection obligations.  Please be aware that our third party service provider handles most enquiries on our behalf and that the information you provide will be shared with them in order to respond to your enquiry

Where were you flying from?

Unfortunately we cannot take up your complaint under the following circumstances:

If it is about a cancellation, delay, downgrading or an instance of denied boarding and your flight is departing from another (not UK) EU country you will need to contact the relevant national enforcement body for aviation in that country.

EU rules on delays, cancellations, denied boarding and downgrading do not apply in relation to flights coming from outside the EU on a non-EU airline. For these or any other complaint about such a flight you will need to write to the airline in the first instance. We may be able to help, if you cannot resolve your problem with the airline directly, if you are a UK resident and your ticket was purchased in the UK.

EU in this sense includes all EU Member States plus EEA countries (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway) and Switzerland.

How to submit a complaint

Please use our online form to send us the details of your complaint against an airline or airport. The form will tell you if your complaint is one that we can help with and you don’t have to fill out the form in one go. In order for us to progress your complaint we will need copies of the supporting information listed below. These can be uploaded and attached to the online form.  If you are unable to scan the supporting documents to upload them with your online submission, please continue to submit the complaint online and we will contact you in due course to let you know what further information we need.

• Copies of your letters or emails to the airline/airport
• Copies of the airline/airport letters to you.
• Details of your flight (Flight number / date / time / route / number of passengers on the booking)
• Receipts for expenses claims

If you are unable to submit the complaint online, please give us a call on 020 7453 6888 and one of our advisers will try to help you.

We will send you a response by email to let you know we have received your complaint, but we will be unable to progress it until we have received all the relevant supporting documentation.

How to submit an enquiry

If you just have a question for us, you can use the online enquiry form or call our advice line. We don’t take up complaints on the basis of a telephone call (but you are welcome to call us first to see if there is anything we can do to help).

Please use our online form to send us the details of your enquiry about an airline or airport. The form will tell you if your enquiry is one that we can help with, and we will send you a response by email.  

                                                                                                                              
Other CAA contact details

• Phone: 020 7453 6888  Consumer Advice Line Monday to Friday 09.00 – 17.00

• Fax: 020 7453 6754

The Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA)

If you are requesting information under FOIA please visit our Freedom of Information page. There are set timescales for us to reply to requests under this Act, and it helps us to respond if you contact us through our online request form for FOI requests.

Where information has been provided to us by airlines as part of our investigations into whether compensation is payable for a delayed or cancelled flight, we will generally not be able to provide copies of that information to you if it is obtained by us as part of our statutory functions.  

How we can help

CAA has a code of conduct for complaint handling which sets out our role and how we aim to achieve our service standards.  If you are polite and reasonable in your dealings with our staff, it will enable us to help you better with your complaint or issue. We reserve the right to end phone calls where abusive language is used. 

The CAA Passenger Advice and Complaints service is not an ombudsman scheme and does not have the ability to decide individual cases or impose requirements. We will advise whether we think you have a valid complaint and if so will take it up with the business concerned.  We use data from the complaints we receive to consider taking enforcement action against a particular business for a pattern of non-compliance with legislation.

If we take up your complaint but are not able to achieve a satisfactory outcome you may have to consider taking your complaint to court. Once your case has been concluded, we will not re-open it unless there is new information provided.

Complaints from passengers with a disability or reduced mobility 

The CAA has taken over handling complaints from air passengers with a disability or reduced mobility from the Equality and Human Rights Commission. We can help with complaints about the assistance provided by airports and airlines for flights departing from England, Scotland and Wales and the assistance provided by EU registered airlines on flights from outside the EU to the UK. In some circumstances you will need to contact the relevant national enforcement body for aviation in another EU country. It may be worth telephoning our advice line before you write to us to make sure we can help.

Phone: 020 7453 6888  Consumer Advice Line Monday to Friday 09.00 – 17.00
Email: passengercomplaints@caa.co.uk

Complaints from Legal Representatives

CAA are unable to progress a complaint submitted by a legal representative on behalf of a complainant until a consent form ST63, signed by the complainant, has been received.

Travel agents and tour operators

If you need to make a claim under the ATOL scheme or have an enquiry about a holiday company please see our section on ATOL or contact the company's trade association such as the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA),  the Association of Independent Tour Operators (AITO) if the company is a member. These associations have codes of conduct for their members and offer arbitration services through which customers can pursue complaints. 

If they are not members of these organisations you could contact your local Citizens Advice Bureau.

Health related complaints 

If you have already made a written complaint to an airline or airport on a health matter, and you are not satisfied with the outcome; the CAA Aviation Health Unit may be able to help. We won’t take up a complaint on the basis of a telephone call (but you are welcome to call us first to see if there is anything we can do to help). So you will need to write or email, setting out all the details and including copies of all correspondence.

Aviation Health Unit
Medical Department
CAA Safety Regulation Group
Aviation House
Gatwick Airport South
West Sussex RH6 0YR
Telephone: 01293 573674
Email: AHU@caa.co.uk

Northern Ireland Consumers

If you live in Northern Ireland you may like to contact:

Consumer Council for Northern Ireland 
Elizabeth House
116 Holywood Road
Belfast, BT4 1NY
Telephone / textphone: 028 9067 2488
E-mail: complaints@consumercouncil.org.uk