Otopeni flight compensation: EU 261 rights for passengers at Henri Coandă (OTP)

Bucharest Henri Coandă (OTP), known to almost everyone as Otopeni, handles around 14 million passengers a year and is by a wide margin the busiest airport in Romania. It is the hub for TAROM, the main Romanian base for Wizz Air and Ryanair, and the operating point for every legacy carrier flying into the country — Lufthansa, Air France, KLM, Turkish Airlines, Qatar Airways, Emirates and others. With that volume comes friction. Long winter delays, ROMATSA-linked slot restrictions on busy summer weekends, summer thunderstorms over the Carpathians and the occasional cascade failure on a tight rotation all produce thousands of compensable disruptions a year. This page sets out what a passenger at OTP is entitled to under EU Regulation 261/2004, how the Romanian institutions actually handle the claim, and the three-year prescription deadline that governs how long you have to act.

What EU 261 covers at Otopeni

EU Regulation 261/2004 is the single most important piece of consumer-protection law for any passenger flying out of an EU airport, and Bucharest Henri Coandă is squarely inside its scope. The regulation applies to:

• all flights departing from OTP, regardless of the airline (TAROM, Wizz Air, Ryanair, Lufthansa, Turkish Airlines, Emirates — the carrier's nationality is irrelevant for outbound flights from an EU airport), and
• all flights arriving at OTP, but only if operated by an EU-licensed carrier (so a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to OTP is covered; an Emirates flight from Dubai to OTP is not covered on arrival, only on departure).

Three categories of disruption trigger the fixed compensation right:

1. Long delay — arrival at the final destination three hours or more after the scheduled time. The Court of Justice settled this in Sturgeon (joined cases C-402/07 and C-432/07, 2009), which extended the compensation right from cancellations to long delays and remains the cornerstone of every EU 261 delay claim.
2. Cancellation — when the flight does not operate, and the airline gave notice less than 14 days before scheduled departure.
3. Denied boarding — when the airline refuses boarding to a passenger holding a confirmed reservation, typically because of overbooking but also in other situations.

The right is owed by the operating carrier — the airline that actually flew or was supposed to fly the route — not by the ticket reseller, the travel agent, the airport operator (Compania Națională Aeroporturi București) or AACR. Code-share and wet-lease cases follow the operating-carrier rule strictly.

The amounts: 250, 400 and 600 euro from Otopeni

The amount of fixed compensation depends on the distance of the flight, not on the ticket price. The regulation expresses every amount in euro; Romanian passengers receive payment either in euro or in lei at the airline's discretion, but the legal denomination remains euro.

For long-haul cases above 3,500 km the airline may halve the 600 euro figure to 300 euro if it re-routed the passenger and arrival at the final destination was no more than four hours late. The same halving rule applies in the 400 euro band when the delay stays under three hours after re-routing.

For the full delay-threshold mechanics and the halving rule, see our EU 261 2026 delay thresholds guide .

When the airline can refuse: extraordinary circumstances

The compensation right is not absolute. Article 5(3) of EU 261 lets the airline refuse if it can prove the disruption was caused by extraordinary circumstances that could not have been avoided even with all reasonable measures. The burden of proof rests on the airline, not on the passenger, and Romanian courts apply this strictly — a vague reference to "operational reasons" in a refusal email does not discharge it.

The CJEU has built a clear line of case law over fifteen years. In Wallentin-Hermann (C-549/07, 2008) the Court ruled that technical defects on the aircraft are not extraordinary, even when they surface unexpectedly during a turnaround, because such defects are inherent to the normal operation of an airline. In Krüsemann (C-195/17, 2018) the Court confirmed that a wildcat strike by the airline's own crew is not extraordinary either, because labour relations sit squarely within the carrier's sphere of responsibility.

What does typically qualify:

The Otopeni-specific complication: airlines sometimes cite "rotation delay" — meaning an earlier leg of the same aircraft was delayed somewhere else, and the OTP-departing flight inherited the lateness. A pure rotation delay is not an extraordinary circumstance. It traces back to an earlier root cause, and that root cause is what must be proven extraordinary. If the original delay six hours earlier was a technical defect or a crew shortage, the OTP-departing passenger keeps the compensation right intact.

The right to care while you wait at Otopeni

Alongside compensation, EU 261 imposes a separate duty of care under article 9. It applies to the waiting time, not to the cause of the disruption, and therefore never falls away — not even when a genuine ROMATSA strike or extreme weather is the trigger. While waiting at Henri Coandă for re-routing, the airline must provide:

• meals and drinks proportional to the wait,
• two phone calls or equivalent communication,
• a hotel and ground transport to and from it if the wait runs overnight or substantially shifts to the next day.

If the airline offers nothing at the gate, buy reasonable food on the airside, book a reasonable hotel near OTP (the airport-area hotels around Calea Bucureștilor or in central Bucharest are the standard reference), and keep every receipt. Those receipts are reimbursable against the airline as a separate claim from the fixed compensation. The two are cumulative — you receive the care expenses on top of the 250–600 euro, not instead of it.

For the full mechanics of meals, hotel and ground transport entitlement, see our right to care guide .

How a Romanian passenger collects an OTP claim

The right itself comes from EU 261. The procedure for getting paid is governed by Romanian law, and there are three escalation routes after the initial complaint to the airline.

The first step is always a written claim to the operating carrier. Use the airline's passenger-rights form on its website, or send a formal letter to the claims address. State the flight number, the date, the OTP departure, the arrival delay or cancellation cause, and an explicit reference to Regulation (EC) No 261/2004. Give the airline 30 days to respond.

If the airline refuses or stays silent, escalate to ANPC (Autoritatea Națională pentru Protecția Consumatorilor). ANPC handles consumer complaints generally and has working leverage on every carrier with a Romanian commercial presence. The complaint can be filed in English with a translated set of supporting documents; in practice, Romanian works better because the case-handler is Romanian-speaking.

The second institutional route is AACR (Autoritatea Aeronautică Civilă Română), formally designated as Romania's National Enforcement Body under article 16 of EU 261/2004. AACR will not order the airline to pay you directly — that is not within the NEB's powers — but a formal AACR finding that the carrier breached EU 261 carries significant evidentiary weight in any subsequent civil claim.

The third and usually most decisive route is the Judecătoria — the local first-instance civil court. The CJEU confirmed in Rehder (C-204/08, 2009) that a passenger may sue at either the departure or the destination airport. For an OTP-departing flight, that means the Bucharest Judecătoria has jurisdiction regardless of the airline's nationality or registered seat — Lufthansa, Wizz Air UK, Qatar Airways and Emirates can all be sued in Bucharest for a flight that originated at Henri Coandă.

For claims under 10,000 RON — which covers every individual EU 261 claim up to 600 euro plus interest and costs — the simplified procedure under article 1026 of the New Code of Civil Procedure applies: a flat low court fee, no mandatory lawyer, and a judgment usually inside 30 to 60 days. For a step-by-step procedural walk-through, see our how to file a flight compensation claim from a Romanian court guide .

For a deeper look at whether to file the claim yourself or use a service, our DIY vs claim agency comparison lays out the trade-offs honestly. The native Romanian version of this same Otopeni page is available at our pagină despre compensație zbor de la Otopeni .

The three-year prescription period in Romania

Romania applies a three-year prescription period to EU 261 claims under article 2517 of the Romanian Civil Code. This is the general limitation period for consumer obligations and the one Romanian courts consistently apply to air-passenger compensation cases. The CJEU confirmed in Cuadrench Moré (C-139/11, 2013) that national limitation periods govern EU 261 claims — there is no uniform EU-wide deadline.

The practical consequence for OTP passengers: a flight delayed or cancelled on 15 April 2024 must be the subject of a court claim filed by 15 April 2027 at the latest. After that date, even a clearly meritorious claim will be rejected as time-barred. The three-year clock runs from the date of the disrupted flight itself, not from the airline's first refusal email and not from the last round of correspondence.

This window is materially shorter than in some other EU jurisdictions — Poland runs ten years on most consumer obligations, Spain runs five — so a Romanian passenger flying from OTP has less time to act than a Polish or Spanish one would. If you are inside the last six months of the three-year window and the airline is still stalling, the safe move is to file directly at the Bucharest Judecătoria rather than continue exchanging emails.

For the consolidated regulation text, see Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 on EUR-Lex , particularly article 5 on cancellations, article 6 on delays and article 7 on compensation amounts.

Patterns specific to Otopeni

A few disruption patterns recur at OTP often enough to be worth flagging:

• ROMATSA-linked slot delays on summer weekends. Bucharest sits on a busy north-south Eurocontrol corridor. On peak summer Saturdays, slot delays of one to two hours are common. A delay confirmed by ROMATSA as airspace-related is typically extraordinary and removes the compensation right. A delay that the airline labels "ATC restriction" but that ROMATSA cannot confirm is contested ground — ask in writing.
• Winter cascade delays from TAROM. TAROM operates several short-rotation routes (Bucharest–Cluj, Bucharest–Iași, Bucharest–Chișinău, Bucharest–Sofia). A delay early in the day at one of the regional airports can cascade into evening departures at OTP. Rotation cascade is not extraordinary on its own — the root cause governs.
• Wizz Air and Ryanair denied boarding cases. Low-cost overbooking at OTP follows the usual pattern: volunteer buy-back at the gate, then involuntary denied boarding by check-in time. The compensation right under article 4 applies regardless of whether the cause is classic overbooking or a different reason (CJEU has consistently extended denied-boarding rights beyond pure overbooking situations). See our denied boarding compensation guide for the full mechanics.
• Long-haul Emirates / Qatar / Turkish disruptions. A cancelled OTP–Dubai or OTP–Istanbul flight on a long-haul carrier is a 600 euro case if notified inside 14 days. These airlines tend to honour claims more quickly through their own portals than mid-tier European carriers do, but still expect a 30-to-60 day cycle before the payment lands.

Get the OTP claim moving without the paperwork

If your Otopeni flight has just been disrupted and you would rather not spend three months chasing the airline yourself — especially if the carrier is non-EU, notoriously slow to settle, or has already issued a flat refusal — a specialised passenger-rights service handles the entire procedure on a no-win, no-fee basis. The service files the initial claim, escalates through ANPC and AACR, and litigates at the Judecătoria if needed; if the claim succeeds, the service keeps a commission (typically around a quarter); if it fails, you pay nothing.

Check your Otopeni flight in two minutes with AirHelp — no win, no fee

This is not legal advice

This page is based on published EU sources and current Romanian institutional practice. For advice on your individual case, contact ANPC (Autoritatea Națională pentru Protecția Consumatorilor) or AACR (Autoritatea Aeronautică Civilă Română), the National Enforcement Body for air passenger rights in Romania, or consult a lawyer authorised to practise in Romania.

Sources and further reading

• EUR-Lex — Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 consolidated text , articles 5 (cancellation), 6 (delay), 7 (compensation), 8 (refund or re-routing), 9 (right to care)
• CJEU Sturgeon, joined cases C-402/07 and C-432/07 (2009) — three-hour delay rule
• CJEU Wallentin-Hermann C-549/07 (2008) — technical defects are not extraordinary
• CJEU Krüsemann C-195/17 (2018) — wildcat strike by airline's own crew is not extraordinary
• CJEU Rehder C-204/08 (2009) — jurisdiction at departure or destination airport
• CJEU Cuadrench Moré C-139/11 (2013) — national prescription periods apply to EU 261 claims
• AACR — Autoritatea Aeronautică Civilă Română (Romania's National Enforcement Body under article 16 of EU 261/2004)
• ANPC — Autoritatea Națională pentru Protecția Consumatorilor
• Compania Națională Aeroporturi București — operator of Bucharest Henri Coandă (OTP)