Frequently Asked Questions
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Check our frequently asked questions before contacting us.
We believe in a world where air travellers do not have to suffer because of the stronger position of the airline. We raise awareness about passenger rights and make use our expertise to help passengers secure their compensation by handling their claims cases and winning legal battles on their behalf. Our approach is based on the belief that customers deserve a fast and easy-to-use service, hence we offer our service based on state-of-the-art IT solutions.
Welcome to our modern world, where passengers are no longer the weaker party and can stand up for their rights effectively!
FlightClaimEU
FlightClaimEU does not guarantee that you will receive compensation or reimbursement. Before we start the claims handling process and make your case to the airline and/or further enforcement agencies or courts, we first determine the eligibility of your case. We will inform you about this decision between 2 to 5 working days from your submission.
We would be glad to hear from you. You can always contact us at office@flightclaimeu.com, or you can leave us a message using our contact form by clicking here.
FlightClaimEU treats all your personal information confidentially, and stores it in a secure digital environment. We will not provide any part of your data to third parties without your consent and will not store it any longer than necessary for the claims handling process to finish. We also fully comply with the new GDPR regulations. For more information please consult our Privacy Policy and General Terms and Conditions.
CCN Claims Corporation Network is an innovative European cross-border claims management service provider, based primarily in The Netherlands. FlightClaimEU is a trademark of CCN and hence on legal documents related to your claim, you will be formally represented by CCN, not FlightClaimEU. However, throughout the process you will always remain a FlightClaimEU client and will only be contacted by FlightClaimEU representatives. Your data will also only be handled by FlightClaimEU, which you can read about here, and in our Privacy Policy.
Besides the exceptional flight claim handling experience FlightClaimEU offers, our motivation to advocate passenger rights makes our service more informative (we always tell you exactly what we have done to progress your claim). In addition, our carefully designed website and forms offer a truly innovative and easy-to-use user experience. Our parent organization, Claims Corporation Network also backs us with top-notch legal expertise to succeed even in he most complex flight claim cases.
Claims process
If such an event made you arrive more than three hours late at your final destination, or meant that you could not get to your final destination and needed to return to your original place of departure, you are eligible for compensation if your connecting flights were in the same booking. In addition, you are entitled to the reimbursement of all additional expenses you had incurred at the place of the stopover due to the disruption.
In case of eligibility, the compensation and/or reimbursement is always due to the passenger(s) in the booking, rather than the person or organization who made the booking. This means that it makes no difference, if your ticked had been given to you by your employer or a travel agency – it is you who suffered from the consequences of the flight disruption, and thus it is you personally, who will be compensated for it.
Our online claim submission forms request the provision of some travel documents. Namely, we may ask for copies of the boarding pass, booking confirmation and a personal identification document (passport or national identification card) to be submitted. In addition, in some cases the online form may ask for receipts of extra expenses or of the booking to be uploaded.
We only use these documents to double check that the details you provided are correct, and are thus not compulsory to submit. Receipts are only requested in cases where they may be refunded, but are also not compulsory to provide.
However, your personal identification document will be necessary, if your case needs to be escalated to a legal level. If this is the case and you had not provided the document when filing the claim, we will contact you and request that you submit it.
You may be eligible for a compensation, or reimbursement, or in many cases, both. Three bands of compensations are specified in the regulation as €250, €400 or €600 per person. The eligibility and band of compensation airlines are obliged to provide in a specific case depends on both the total flight distance, and the type of the disruption. In case of delays, it also depends on the length of the delay. In some cases, reimbursement of additional expenses induced by the disruption also needs to be provided, if the receipts of the extra expenses have been kept. In the case of baggage claims the compensation/reimbursement scheme is different, and normally a maximum of about €1300 can be claimed per flight. You can find more information about this topic on our flight rights and baggage rights pages.
Most cases take between two weeks and two months to be resolved – significant deviations from this only occur when a third party (airline, enforcement body or court) takes very long to respond.
We take great care to update you whenever the status of your claim changes, and upon your request.
You can read more details about the process below:
In most cases we determine the elibility of claims within 2 working days of the submission, and 5 working days at the latest for complex cases. Depending on how long the airline takes to respond to the claim, the waiting period after this is typically one to six weeks in our experience – with some airlines taking longer to respond than others. If the airline accepts the claim, they usually provide the compensation within a week from their response. If they reject it and we either enlist a national enforcement body or initiate a court proceeding, a further 2-6 months waiting period may occur depending on the specific case in question.
FlightClaimEU uses various commercial and consumer databases of flight, weather and air traffic control data. This set of up-to-date information serves as the basis for our decisions about eligibility. Not only does FlightClaimEU gather data from dedicated databases, but also from social media sources and news articles. These additional sources play a fundamental role in our monitoring system. The top-of-the-line IT solutions we implement and maintain help us always stay ahead of the pack.
You can file your claim using our online forms, which you can access by clicking on the name of the relevant service:
FlightClaim | BaggageClaim | TaxClaim
You will generally need:
- Your basic personal details, and of any underage children who travelled with you
- The details of your flight
- In case of a BaggageClaim, preferably photos of your bag, and specifically about any damage to it, and your Property Irregularity Report (PIR) number
- Electronic copies of your travel documents (booking confirmation, boarding pass, passport/identification card)
We recommend that you submit as much information and as many documents as possible, since this can speed up the process significantly. We also recommend that you collect any receipts of extra expenses, as you may also be eligible to be reimbursed for these.
External factors
The concept of extraordinary circumstances is used to decide whether an airline can be held responsible for a disruption affecting one of their flights or not, and if it is therefore liable to pay compensations or reimbursements. Its definition has evolved over time through court rulings and regulation amendments. Main types of extraordinary circumstances are extreme weather-related issues, strike action, and safety concerns. However, only a subset of specific sub-types fall into the definition, for example lightning strikes and airline crew strikes do not count. Our flight rights page and several other FAQ questions tackle this topic.
Certain types of strikes and political unrest qualify as extraordinary circumstances which may exemp the airline from its obligation to pay compensation. Air traffic control (ATC) strikes and political unrest giving rise safety concerns count as such circumstances, but airline crew strikes for example, do not. FlightClaimEU will always investigate the circumstances surrounding the disruption carefully using its range of information sources. We have an intuitive flight rights page to guide you through the eligibility criteria.
In each claim case, FlightClaimEU will look up the weather records relevant to the airport in the timeframe of the departure/arrival using its comprehensive set of sources. In some specific types of extreme weather conditions, the airline can reject the claim based on extraordinary circumstances. Winds strong enough to constitute a danger to the landing/takeoff operation and significantly decreased visibility qualify as such circumstances, but lightnings for example, do not. You can find more information about this on our flight rights information page.
Service fees
Once we have received the monetary compensation from the airline, we will request your bank details, which we will forward to our finance department. They will then initiate the payment, which will take place within one week from receiving your bank details. If you are curious about the length of the claims handling procedure, we also have a FAQ entry about that.
In short: No. Even if FlightClaimEU escalates a claim to a legal level, the airline will be legally obliged to bear the cost of the legal proceedings if we win the case. In the extremely rare event of a case being lost in court, FlightClaimEU will bear the financial burden of the court proceedings at no extra cost to its clients.
FlightClaimEU provides its services on a ‘no cure – no pay’ basis. This means we only charge for our services if we succeed in the claims procedure – otherwise, you do not have to pay us. This applies to all our services except for Second Opinion, for which we only charge a €25 flat fee in return for the advice provided.
You will receive 75% of the funds provided by the airline, minus a €25 administration flat fee per passenger. When we are unable to claim funds your behalf, we do not charge for our services, and a situation where you pay more than what was claimed cannot occur.*
An example calculation is provided below:
Airline compensation: €600
Passengers: 3
You receive: 3 x 600 x 0.75 – 3 x 25 = €1275
In cases where a court procedure is initiated, FlightClaimEU’s commission is 50%, meaning that you will receive 50% of the funds provided by the airline. No administration cost will be charged in such cases.
Moreover, all court procedures will be initiated only after we have your written consent.
*Even in cases where a paid court procedure is initiated, FlightClaimEU will guarantee to cover all costs in the rare event that the case is lost. When the case is won, the airline is obligated to bear all legal costs brought forward by the proceedings.
FlightClaimEU provides its three main services, FlightClaim, BaggageClaim and TaxClaim on a ‘no cure-no pay’ basis. No cure-no pay means that we will only charge for our service if we succesfully handled your claim and secured a compensation and/or reimbursement for you. The fee will be deduced from the compensation the airline pays. Our only service that does not use this feature is the Second Opinion service, which charges directly for the advice we provide you with.
Power of attorney
In order for FlightClaimEU to be able to legally present the claim case on your behalf towards the airline, involve an enforcement body or represent you in the matter before a court, it needs to be formally empowered by you to do so.
The power of attorney document serves this exact purpose: it expresses legally, that you are giving your consent to us handling your claim. Our system will automatically generate, and send the document to you shortly after you submit your claim, which you will need to sign and return to us.
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