Airhelp Review – How I Got Compensation For a Delayed Flight

This time I’m going to deliver you the text on Airhelp review – a flight claim management company. In short, with their help, I managed to get compensation for a delayed flight, despite previous unsuccessful attempts to settle it on my own.

No win, no fee

Traveling with airplane brings the risk delays and cancellation. This can really disrupt the itinerary of your travel and ruin your plans. But cheer up – there are laws which entitle you to remuneration for that, even after 3 years since it happened. In short words – you can apply for compensation base on the EU law called The Flight Compensation Regulation 261/2004.

There are two ways to apply for compensation:

• You can do it on your own. But keep in mind the latest reports show that 70% of customers who attempt to contact the airlines regarding claims for the bad flight are rejected or ignored. Moreover, research shows that only 5% of all air passengers use their right to claim delayed or canceled flights.
• Taking the above statistics into account it can be difficult to do it alone. Therefore you have the possibility to use the third party company to do the job for you. They will take care of all administrative work. These companies are working in the no win, no fee model and they will not charge you for this administrative work unless they will win the case. Then, you will need to share your benefit with them (on average 25% of your compensation amount).

File the claim on my own

Well it happened to me – my connecting flight to Shanghai which I took with Lufthansa was disrupted because of first flight delay.

Not thinking long I decided to write to Lufthansa’s customer service:

I thought that it will be the end and I will receive the money – the case for me was obvious and I am a customer with premium status (Senator status in their loyalty program) – so, I didn’t expect any problems.

Well, I was wrong. After 1,5 week I received the following statement from Lufthansa:

I did not agree with this – I knew that the problem was with the late landing of the plane which caused my delay with connecting flight, so I replied:

But it seemed to be not enough – Lufthansa was continuously standing at their point:

I had no other idea how to proceed further and I had no time to move the case to the court. I gave up at that point.

Airhelp review

Almost a year later I came across a company Airhelp. It’s the biggest player on the market with a very good reputation and long presence on the market (see my article on best flight claim management companies). I decided to file my claim again.

In fact, I did it just for fun – I did not expect that they will win…

Anyway, I logged at their site and provided the detailed data about my flight, booking number, name, address and described what has happened:

I also provided the following documents as they said that it will speed up proceeding of my claim up to 30%:

as you can see above – they immediately indicated how much they will take from your compensation. This is something that I’d like to emphasize – the simplicity and transparency of the whole process. Whatever you will do, you will be notified what is happening with your case and what you can expect next. That was a freaking awesome experience! That’s also the reason I decided to write this Airhelp review.

Claim with Airhelp step by step

One day after I received the email with confirmation that my claim meets the EU261 conditions and will proceed further = I have a chance for my compensation:

and soon after I’ve received the information about the fact that my claim was forwarded to the airline:

At that time I was not really convinced that Airhelp will change anything. And then I received this:

Literally, I was shocked! They won it for me. That was pretty awesome news – I was not expecting this at all. Good for me. The next email I got from Airhelp was about to select a payment method:

and soon after I had money on my account.

TLDR – Claim with Airhelp resume

Claim process with Airhelp review in a nutshell:

• Airhelp won for me the compensation which I was refused trying to claim it on my own.
• The whole process took two weeks:

• I was informed about each step of the process and since the beginning, it was clear how much money I will get in the end if Airhelp will succeed.

Final words

I’ve learned the following lessons out of this experience:

• If your case is obvious and you were informed about the reason of delay/cancellation through the official way (for example captain told you that) and the reason does not stick to the definition of extraordinary circumstances, then try to file a claim on your own as your chances to succeed are pretty high.

One remark – there are airlines which are more willing to cooperate and those which will almost never pay you unless you go to court. In some airlines only 2% to 3% of claims without legal backing receive compensation. So as you can see, going on your own could be challenging.

• The second option is to save your time and nerves and leave it to professionals. You can forward your claim to Airhelp, relax, and just follow the process. Moreover, you can file claims up to 3 years back.

I hope you will succeed with your claims and the experience I shared with you will be a valuable input for your decisions. Let me know in comments how did you do with your claims.

Featured image source: pixabay.com