Aviation disputes in Spain in 2026 are increasingly shaped by the intersection of consumer protection, EU jurisdictional rules, operational disruption risks and technological regulation, particularly in the field of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). At the same time, financing and leasing structures continue to evolve under the dual influence of the Cape Town system and Spanish civil law principles, creating both opportunities and execution challenges.

The legal landscape has been significantly influenced by recent case law from the Spanish Supreme Court and the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), alongside the entry into force of Law 8/2025 and Royal Decree 1029/2025. While Law 8/2025 introduces important amendments to Spain’s aviation legislative framework, Royal Decree 1029/2025 is more specifically concerned with the registration of civil aircraft and the modernisation of the corresponding registry regime. Together, these developments require airlines, lessors and other aviation stakeholders to reassess contractual frameworks, compliance systems and dispute strategies.

Recent case law in Spain and at EU level has clarified several of the issues currently driving aviation disputes, particularly in relation to consumer protection, jurisdiction, operational disruption and unmanned aircraft systems.

Consumer Claims

Beyond case law and legislative reform, several broader trends continue to influence the aviation disputes environment in Spain. Passenger rights litigation remains one of the most active areas. EU261 claims continue to generate substantial volumes of proceedings, and the increased use of claims agencies and assigned claims has contributed to a more industrialised form of litigation.

A dispute has emerged between the airlines and the Spanish Ministry of Consumer Affairs related to hand luggage charges. The Ministry has taken the position that allowing passengers to carry a small suitcase into the cabin should be considered a basic element of air transport and thus included in the ticket price. However, several airlines maintain that charging separately for hand luggage is part of their pricing model, enabling lower base fares and greater flexibility for passengers. This disagreement has given rise to regulatory scrutiny and potential enforcement actions, highlighting the tension between consumer protection objectives and the commercial practices of low-cost carriers. Furthermore, the Ministry of Consumer Affairs has imposed heavy fines on several carriers, hitting low-cost operators such as Ryanair. The matter is currently under judicial review in Spain’s Audiencia Nacional, or National Court.

Spanish courts hear a considerable number of cases arising from passenger claims under Regulation (EU) 261. The Ministry of Transport introduced an arrangement under which passengers can file administrative claims under an administrative procedure which does not exclude the presentation of these claims in the courts under the pretext of providing a specialised service on the matter. We believe that most passengers still file claims in the courts. A current provision of the law on procedures (LEC) now requires that before a court case is admitted, the passenger must initiate a private mediation or conciliation procedure.

Another notable development in the consumer area is the Spanish Supreme Court’s judgment of 2 October 2025 refining the control of unfair terms in airline contracts by focusing on transparency, objective justification and contractual balance. The court accepted the validity of clauses allowing post-booking adjustments to airport charges where those adjustments are linked to an external event and operate symmetrically, so that the fare may vary upwards or downwards without giving the airline unilateral power to alter the price. By contrast, it held that clauses excluding reimbursement of airport charges where the passenger does not use the ticket are void. The reasoning is that, if carriage is not ultimately provided, the airline does not incur the underlying expense and cannot retain that amount consistently with the requirements of good faith and contractual balance. The judgment also upheld charges for the reprinting of boarding passes at the airport, treating them as a reasonable consequence of passenger default rather than as an abusive surcharge. In practical terms, this ruling requires airlines to revisit their consumer-facing terms, redesign booking and refund flows, and ensure that automatic reimbursement of airport charges is properly embedded in back-office systems rather than left to customer initiative.

A further significant development concerns jurisdiction in compensation claims. In its judgment of 9 October 2025 in Lufthansa/AirHelp (C-551/24), the CJEU reinforced the predictability of the jurisdictional framework under Article 7(1)(b) of Regulation 1215/2012 within the context of air transport. The court confirmed that claims for compensation connected with a flight may be brought, at the claimant’s election, either before the courts of the place of departure or those of the place of arrival. It also made clear that the assignment of the claim to a third party, such as a claims management company, does not alter that analysis, because the assignee succeeds in the same contractual position and cannot modify the jurisdictional basis of the original obligation. The practical effect is likely to be an increase in strategic forum selection and a further consolidation of mass claims practices across the EU. Airlines operating in Spain will therefore need to align defence strategies, reserve policies and settlement criteria across multiple jurisdictions rather than treating these cases as purely local disputes.

Operation of Aircraft and Drones

The operational side of aviation disputes has also evolved through the CJEU’s judgment of 12 February 2026 in Case C-408/24, concerning the liability of air navigation service providers. In that ruling, the court clarified that the Single European Sky framework may, in appropriate circumstances, support claims by airspace users seeking recovery for losses linked to culpable breaches of applicable obligations by the relevant provider. This is significant because it strengthens the legal basis on which airlines may pursue losses arising from outages, systems failures or service interruptions that generate widespread cancellations and delay-related costs. The judgment is likely to intensify scrutiny of service continuity standards, diligence obligations and the evidential basis for attributing operational failures to the relevant provider. From a contractual and insurance perspective, it also encourages airlines and other stakeholders to reassess how ANSP-related risks are allocated and how such events are documented when disputes arise.

In the field of drones, the Spanish Supreme Court’s judgment of 19 June 2025 on Royal Decree 517/2024 offers a more nuanced picture. The court partially annulled the royal decree, specifically Section 3 of Chapter VI, while upholding the broader regulatory structure governing UAS operations, including geographical restrictions and prior-notification obligations for urban flights justified by public-safety considerations. The result is that Spain maintains a restrictive but broadly judicially endorsed framework for drone operations in sensitive environments, even though the defective part of the regime must now be reworked. For operators, this means that compliance efforts should remain focused on territorial restrictions, prior communications, traceable safety assessments and privacy risk evaluation, rather than assuming that the partial annulment signals any general relaxation of the regime.

Legislative Reform Law 8/2025 and Royal Decree 1029/2025

Alongside these judicial developments, Law 8/2025 introduces an important reform of Spain’s aviation legislative framework through amendments to the Air Navigation Act 48/1960 and the Aviation Safety Act 21/2003. Its significance lies not only in the updating of substantive rules, but also in the attempt to modernise administrative techniques, strengthen enforcement and improve co-ordination across different areas of aviation oversight. Royal Decree 1029/2025 complements that process in a more specific field by establishing a new regulation for the registration of civil aircraft, replacing the earlier Royal Decree 384/2015 framework and modernising registry procedures and documentation.

One of the central changes introduced by Law 8/2025 is the replacement, in relevant areas, of the traditional concept of prior administrative authorisation with the broader notion of entitlement (habilitación). This model allows legal entitlement to conduct certain activities to arise through different mechanisms, including certificates, prior declarations or accredited training, depending on the nature of the activity concerned. The reform is designed to simplify procedures, reduce administrative burdens and allocate public resources more efficiently, while maintaining regulatory control in areas where safety concerns remain high. At the same time, the law strengthens the sanctioning system, with particular emphasis on unmanned aircraft operations, dangerous goods and infringements affecting aeronautical easements. It also reinforces occurrence-reporting obligations and just-culture principles by expressly typifying failures in reporting and analysis as administrative offences. In institutional terms, the reform also introduces new organisational and co-ordination measures within the aviation sector.

For operators, the reform is not merely technical. It requires a practical review of legacy approvals and internal procedures in order to determine how existing licences, permits and operational consents fit within the new habilitación framework. It also requires an update of compliance matrices, sanctions-defence protocols and training systems, particularly for businesses active in drone operations or other regulated sub-sectors exposed to increased supervisory attention. Occurrence-reporting systems and safety-management procedures must also be revisited to ensure consistency with the reinforced just-culture obligations. In addition, the reform has budgetary consequences, since the new rules on air-navigation charges apply from the following fiscal year and must therefore be factored into financial planning.

Cape Town Convention and Enforcement in Spain

The Cape Town Convention continues to occupy a distinctive place in Spain’s aviation legal landscape. Spain’s adoption of the Convention and Aircraft Protocol has improved the attractiveness of Spanish aviation assets for international financing and leasing. At the same time, however, the practical operation of the Cape Town system in Spain continues to reflect a degree of tension between international uniform rules and domestic concepts of security, registration, and enforcement.

The main difficulty lies in the fact that the International Registry operates on a declaratory basis, whereas Spanish law places significant weight on the constitutive and perfection-related functions of domestic registries. Similarly, some categories recognised under the Cape Town system as protected interests do not correspond neatly to Spanish law concepts of real security, which traditionally depend on domestic forms such as mortgages and non-possessory pledges. Enforcement poses an additional challenge since Spanish law does not admit self-help remedies and generally requires judicial intervention for the physical repossession of aircraft. In one word, there are uncertainties as to how international interests will be enforced by the Spanish courts since certain types of international interests are not recognised as such under Spanish law, meaning that the enforcement of security right Cape Town Convention will need to be adapted through Spanish jurisprudence

Within that context, the IDERA mechanism remains especially important. In practice, it offers a comparatively efficient route for deregistration and export through administrative action, without the need for prior court involvement, provided the relevant requirements have been properly met and the default notice has been duly served.

EU ETS

Operational and geopolitical risk has also become a more prominent source of dispute. Fuel volatility continues to affect margins and exposes airlines to difficult decisions on hedging, disclosure and covenant management. At the same time, airspace closures and route disruptions linked to geopolitical instability increase the importance of force majeure, change-in-law and disruption-allocation clauses across a wide range of commercial contracts. These pressures are likely to generate disputes not only with passengers, but also within the broader contractual chain involving lessors, service providers, insurers and commercial counterparties. In that respect, the legal treatment of irregular operations increasingly depends on how effectively parties have documented the causal impact of external events and translated those risks into workable contractual language.

Climate compliance remains another structural driver of disputes and commercial pressure. The EU ETS regime continues to impose significant cost discipline on the sector, and there is no indication of any structural softening in Spain. At the same time, concern persists about the future availability and integrity of CORSIA-eligible credits. For airlines and investors, this means that environmental compliance can no longer be treated as a secondary regulatory issue. It is becoming an integral part of budgeting, procurement, governance and risk allocation, and is increasingly relevant to how aviation businesses negotiate financing, assess counterparties and structure sustainability-linked obligations.

ReFuelEU Aviation

Another emerging source of disputes is the implementation of ReFuelEU Aviation. Since 1 January 2025, the Regulation has imposed harmonised obligations across the EU on aviation fuel suppliers, aircraft operators and Union airports:

• fuel suppliers must ensure minimum shares of sustainable aviation fuel in the aviation fuel made available at Union airports;
• aircraft operators are subject to anti-tankering obligations requiring them, in principle, to uplift the fuel necessary to operate the flight; and
• airport managing bodies must facilitate access to the infrastructure needed for the storage, supply and uptake of sustainable aviation fuel.

For aviation stakeholders in Spain, the practical significance of this regime lies not only in compliance and reporting but also in the contractual allocation of supply risk, infrastructure responsibility, additional cost and the consequences of shortage or operational disruption. As sustainable aviation fuel markets remain relatively immature and documentation requirements become more exacting, disputes are likely to arise over fuel availability, technical specifications, pass-through pricing, reporting failures and the interaction between regulatory compliance obligations and long-term fuel supply, leasing and airport service arrangements.

Dispute Resolution and Arbitration

Arbitration is also becoming more central to the resolution of aviation disputes in Spain and in cross-border matters involving Spanish parties. This is particularly visible in supply-chain and maintenance disputes, where technical questions concerning quality, delay, certification, airworthiness directives or component traceability are often better suited to confidential and expert-driven processes than to ordinary court litigation. A similar trend can be seen in airport, ground handling and cargo disputes, where the combination of technical complexity, commercial urgency and cross-border enforcement concerns makes arbitration an increasingly attractive option.

The drafting of dispute-resolution clauses is evolving accordingly. There is growing use of multi-tier provisions that require negotiation, mediation or technical expert determination before arbitration is commenced. Parties are also placing more emphasis on procedural features such as confidentiality, limited document production, the preservation of technical evidence and the availability of emergency measures. Madrid is well placed to benefit from this trend, given its increasing visibility as an arbitral seat in disputes involving Iberian and Latin American connections, although Paris and other established venues remain common choices for larger international aviation disputes.

Spain in 2026 offers a more structured, but also more demanding, legal environment for aviation stakeholders. Consumer protection has become more exacting, jurisdictional rules at EU level have become clearer while facilitating litigation, and the domestic regulatory framework has been modernised. At the same time, operational disruption, environmental compliance and financing enforcement continue to generate complex cross-border risks. For airlines, lessors, operators and investors, the result is a landscape of disputes in which legal exposure increasingly depends on the quality of drafting, the robustness of compliance systems and the ability to document operational and regulatory risk in real time.