This payment is strictly a compensation for the customer's inconvenience and does not replace or form a part of either of the following two compensation categories.
Although the wording of the regulation indicates that this payment is not relevant in the case of delays, the judgment of the European Court of Justice in joined cases C‑402/07 and C‑432/07, from 2007, suggests that the regulation must be interpreted as meaning that passengers whose flights are delayed may be treated, for the purposes of the application of the right to compensation, as passengers whose flights are cancelled and they may thus rely on the right to compensation laid down in Article 7 of the regulation where they suffer, on account of a flight delay, a loss of time equal to or in excess of three hours, that is, where they reach their final destination three hours or more after the arrival time originally scheduled by the air carrier. This case is under appeal.