Especially if you often travel by plane, you have probably already been annoyed about delays of your flights. A flight delay on arrival and departure is not only unpleasant, but often also has far-reaching consequences: missed connecting flights or train connections, canceled business appointments, paid, but unused hotel stays, etc. Although the EU already passed a regulation some time ago to protect Passenger rights resolved (EU Regulation 261/2004), which also regulates the handling of delays in flight operations for passengers. According to this regulation, for delays of three hours or more, compensation payments of 250 euros to 600 euros are due by the airline responsible . But enforcing your right to compensation often requires a lot of patience and takes a lot of time, because the airlines often argue about responsibilities, especially when several airlines are involved in handling a flight connection.
You have never flown? Here you can find out how a flight works.
Important: The (EU Regulation 261/2004) only applies to the European Aviation Area; or to be more precise for flights within the EU or out of the EU. For flights from non-EU countries to the EU, the regulation only applies to European airlines such as Lufthansa, Eurowings, Condor etc.
Overall, the EU regulation 261/2004 is over 11 A4 pages long and difficult to understand. In order to inform you comprehensively about your rights and to make it easier for you to enforce them, some air passenger rights portals have been launched, which save you a lot of time and nerves by initiating all necessary legal steps. The companies behind it sometimes rightly offer their services to different conditions. In our short comparison for passenger portals we want to give you an overview of which companies are successful in the market here.
There are now many passenger portals such as Airhelp, Claimflights, Compensation2Go, Ersatz-Pilot, EUclaim, EUflight, Fairplane, Flightright, Flug-Verspaetet.de and We buy your flight.
Below you will find a comparison of three largest flight refund providers:
AirHelp
The passenger rights provider AirHelp operates worldwide and in 16 languages and has a very reliable database of flight data from all over the world. The over 700 employees also include teams of lawyers from more than 30 countries who specialize in air passenger rights.
After a short, free check of whether you are entitled to compensation, you can have AirHelp explain your rights to you and instruct the company to enforce your right to reimbursement, in case of doubt even in court. There is no financial risk for you, because the costs are only due if the provider is successful.
The fees at AirHelp are 35% of the reimbursement including VAT. In the event of a legal dispute, a legal recourse fee of 15% including VAT is added to the reimbursed amount.
Flightright
The company Flightright is by its own claims the leading provider of passenger rights for the European area. Flightright sees itself as an online-based legal service for the rights of passengers with a pool of over 100 employees in Germany. The company’s philosophy includes reliability and responsible action, the mission to give consumers a voice to to uphold their rights. Flightright has already received several awards for its service quality.
The fee for the services of Flightright is between 20 to 30% of the compensation amount plus VAT . Since Flightright advertises a wide price range, it is difficult to estimate what price you will have to pay exactly. The difference from 20% to 30% is half, so it is possible that you have to pay up to half more. We found a price test for passenger rights portals, which determined the price based on 20 flights you really have to pay at Flightright.
Even with this provider, you as a customer do not take any risk, as the fees only have to be paid in the event of success.
Claimflights
This service provider sees itself as a helper for air passenger rights and wants to support consumers who are not adequately informed in legal matters in asserting their claims. To this end, Claimflights uses automated processing of legal cases based on complex process and data management systems. The service is also supported by the Federal Office of Economics and Export Control and is available in eight languages.
The costs for using the portal are 22.5% of the reimbursed amount plus VAT. Here too, compensation only has to be paid if the claim is successful.
Passenger portals flight compensation: who has the best offer?
We have taken the effort to read the reviews of the various flight assistants to give a final recommendation. We can recommend ClaimFlights with a view to the amount of compensation and commission, time until compensation, effort as well as customer rating and experience at Trustpilot. ClaimFlights not only has one of the cheapest prices at 22.5% + VAT, but also the best customer ratings on Trustpilot.
The links to the providers from our overview here:
Our conclusion: Is it worth it?
You can claim any of the providers named in the flight refund comparison without financial risks. Although the fees of the individual companies differ from one another, the payment is only ever made in the event of a reimbursement. On all the portals presented in the flight refund comparison you have the opportunity to check your case online free of charge in advance and the result can be called up within a short time.
The companies work with experienced experts in the field of air passenger rights. This increases the chance of successfully asserting your claims. If the airlines are faced with a professional who represents the consumer competently, they are often more cooperative and claims can be enforced more quickly.
In many cases, it took more than a year to enforce flight delay claims to clarify all circumstances and responsibilities. With the help of the providers from the flight refund comparison, you do not have to forego your rights due to time constraints, because they take over all the necessary steps for you. The effort you have to put into commissioning the portals is usually very low in relation to the result. It is not uncommon for the reimbursed amount to even exceed the original ticket price, so that it is always worthwhile to use such a service.
All portals offer you the opportunity to find out about the legal situation in various cases online free of charge. Free sample letters and compensation calculators are also helpful services that you can use at no additional cost. The services offered by the companies come from the legal tech area and should enable you to assert claims to a lesser extent without having to pay relatively high legal fees. In addition, the providers give you useful additional information that can help you to choose a reliable airline, and valuable tips on how to best act in the event of a claim.
