When Ryanair refused to compensate me for a three-and-a-half-hour delayed flight from Dublin to London last September I refused to back down.

Around half of passengers who claim compensation from an airline are rejected at first – but I knew I was entitled to compensation for a delay of more than three hours.

I had two key pieces of ammunition. I had taken note of a revealing announcement made by the pilot just before we took off. 

And I had the stream of grumbling text messages I’d sent to my boyfriend, which amounted to a time-stamped blow-by-blow account of what happened.

I had an inkling it was going to be a long night when I turned up at the airport at 5pm for my 6.25pm flight, and it already said ‘delayed’ on the board, with a wait of one hour and 45 minutes.

I moped around the terminal while occasionally going to speak to the Ryanair staff at the gate to get an update. They said the delay was due to an air traffic control problem.

After half an hour, Ryanair gave me a voucher for €4 (£3.30) – not enough even to buy a sandwich, so I bought two packets of crisps.

Eventually, Ryanair sent what looked like an automated email about claiming compensation. It said that because the delay had now reached two hours past the original take-off time, I should take note of my rights under the flight passenger regulation EU261/2004.

We finally took off at 9.50pm – more than three hours after we were supposed to. But I was hopeful that I’d at least get some compensation.

The next morning I went on to Ryanair’s website to make a claim. I typed in my flight details and the booking reference. But a message told me my flight did not qualify for compensation.

Ryanair said that my flight had been disrupted due to air traffic control restrictions. This is one of the reasons that airlines can give for delays that counts as ‘extraordinary circumstances’ beyond their control.

It’s their get-out-of-jail-free card – if they can prove that the reason for the delay falls into this category they don’t have to pay any compensation. This was as far as I could get in the complaint process online.

At this point I considered giving up, as I’m sure many people do. But then I remembered an announcement made by the pilot while the plane was sitting on the Tarmac. 

He apologised for the delay and said that, until a couple of hours ago, the plane we had boarded was meant to be going to Birmingham instead of London. This didn’t strike me as an air traffic control problem.

If you disagree with an airline’s compensation decision, you have the right to go to an alternative dispute resolution (ADR) service to contest the decision. But you must have complained to the airline directly first and received its response, or given it eight weeks to respond.

I decided to complain to Ryanair customer service, and received an email to say my complaint was being reviewed. At the bottom of the email there was a notice about Regulation EU261, which said that if I was not happy with this decision I could go to an ADR service.

As I travelled with Ryanair, the free ADR service I could use was Aviation ADR, which also covers the likes of easyJet, Wizz Air and TUI. Find out which ADR your airline uses via the Civil Aviation Authority (caa.co.uk).

On the Aviation ADR website, I ticked a box to say I had complained to the airline and uploaded all my flight details. I said that I disputed Ryanair’s reason for the delay, citing the pilot’s announcement as evidence. I also uploaded all the correspondence I had with Ryanair.

The texts to my boyfriend came in handy, because I was able to pin down the exact times I had taken off and landed to tot up the delay.

The regulations state that for delays of more than three hours, on journeys of less than 1,500km – as mine was – you are entitled to compensation of £220. 

This is what I asked Aviation ADR to demand. For flights going 1,500km or further, you can claim more – up to £520 for the longest delays.

The ADR adjudicator agreed with my doubts about the delay’s cause. It turned out my flight had been delayed by three hours due to the late arrival of the aircraft from another flight. Ryanair decided to perform an aircraft change to minimise operational disruption. Only 14 minutes of the delay had been caused by air traffic control problems at London Gatwick.

The ADR asked me to upload my bank details and Ryanair now has 30 days to notify the ADR that payment of the £220 has been made.

If you are rejected for compensation for a delayed flight, don’t give up.

Keep a note of every announcement you hear in the airport and on board, as well as timings. Save screenshots of rejection notices and emails from the airline when you make a claim, too. These can be uploaded to the ADR portal to support your claim.

Money Mail contacted Ryanair for comment.

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