Have you ever been charged extra to sit beside a loved one with a disability or reduced mobility, even though they relied on your help during the flight?

MEPs have secured a deal on new air passenger rights rules that provide stronger protections for vulnerable passengers, including people with disabilities and reduced mobility, while also ensuring compensation for delays of more than three hours, ensuring faster reimbursement, introducing fee-free adjacent seating for children and accompanying passengers, and increasing transparency in flight pricing.

MEPs ensured passengers with disabilities and reduced mobility (PRM) will have the right to compensation, rerouting and assistance by airlines if they miss a flight due to the airport’s failure to help them reach the gate on time.

Passengers with disabilities and reduced mobility, as well as pregnant women, will have the right to sit next to their accompanying person without paying extra, with air carriers obliged to provide adjacent seating. The same right will apply to families travelling with children under the age of 14, ensuring they are seated together at no additional cost.

On Monday evening, a provisional agreement on a review of air passenger rights rules reached by Parliament and Council negotiators secured unanimous backing from the EP delegation to the so-called Conciliation Committee. 

The deal seeks to protect passengers against travel disruption, such as denied boarding and delayed or cancelled flights. 

The rules had not been updated since 2004.

The European Parliament has always been the strongest advocate for strong air passenger rights. This agreement will strengthen the rights of air passengers across Europe. It will bring greater transparency and predictability for both consumers and airlines, without creating unnecessary bureaucracy for our industry. Parliament fought hard to make travel fairer and procedures clearer, and this is what we have delivered.

 Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament

Transport and Tourism Committee Vice-chair Virginijus Sinkevičius (Greens, LT) stressed: “Today Europe is delivering for air passengers. We have protected the rights people already have, added new safeguards, and brought greater clarity when things go wrong. Parliament was clear from day one: we wanted to modernise the rules, but we would not let passengers pay the price. After more than a decade of deadlock, Europe is finally updating air passenger rights while keeping passengers firmly at the centre.”

Rapporteur Andrey Novakov (EPP, BG) added: “Parliament promised passengers that their rights will be protected. And today we delivered. We fought for people, not for statistics. Because behind every delay and every cancellation there are real lives. We also added many clear improvements for families, PRMs and for a competitive aviation sector. This is a balanced result that we can all be proud of.”

Under the third reading procedure, the provisional agreement reached in the Conciliation Committee has to be confirmed by both Parliament and the Council within the next six weeks, with a possibility to extend this deadline by a further two weeks. The two institutions will now vote separately on the joint text after its legal-linguistic revision. The European Parliament is planning to vote on the agreement during its July plenary session.

16.06.2026.