When Airlines Screw Up Your Flight, AirHelp (YC W14) Gets You Paid

I just tried to use the service to get some money from a cancelled flight from Houston to Los Angeles that I had in January.<p>Here&#x27;s some feedback&#x2F;questions about the service:<p>- When I filled in the flight, I selected &quot;cancelled&quot;. When I got to the final claim filing step, it asked how many hours my arrival was delayed, with the highest tier being 4+ hours. This was confusing to me and made me double check that I selected cancelled and not delayed. If the text said here &quot;how much did your flight cancellation delay your arrival?&quot; or something similar, the process would have been much clearer.<p>- After completing the claim filing, I got a message that I wasn&#x27;t eligible for compensation. The first two sentences talked about why I wasn&#x27;t eligible due to not being on a flight between EU countries. The end of the paragraph said that reimbursements aren&#x27;t given for flights cancelled due to weather, safety, strikes, etc. I would be far less confused by the service if a simple answer was given here instead (don&#x27;t mention the EU stuff if you&#x27;re trying to reimburse Americans, and hopefully just put a single statement like &quot;Sorry, you are not eligible for reimbursement because your flight was cancelled due to weather&quot;.<p>Another question related not so much to the website but just the reimbursement service. For the particular IAH-&gt;LAX trip I was hoping to get reimbursed for, I had a Saturday flight delayed then cancelled, then got reschedule to Sunday morning, which got cancelled, and then got rescheduled to Monday (which actually went through). Could I attempt to get reimbursed for both cancellations or just one?

This is a great idea. I once had a (US domestic) flight cancelled at the last minute because there weren&#x27;t enough people on it, and all the airline offered to do was put me in a hotel overnight and pay for my meals while I waited for another flight that was about 20 hours later.<p>In the end I managed to weasel my way onto a different flight to a nearby airport, and I still have no idea what I should have asked for if I had actually had to wait that long. I was pretty outraged that they didn&#x27;t offer me any other compensation for all the time I would have lost because they chose to cancel an underbooked flight.

The power of attorney part is a little scary. I understand they really have to handle the whole process to ensure they get paid at the end, but I surely don&#x27;t take giving someone power of attorney lightly.

Neat.<p>While perhaps impossible, I&#x27;d also love an app that would overall just help me get back ontrack for flights and rebooked somehow.<p>I realize I can go to the gate agent (who invariably now has 50 other people in line, and are working with computers that seem to require 1000 key presses to even look up the most basic thing) or call the airline (similar situation)- but it seems that the best results only happen for you if they aren&#x27;t super busy and like you.<p>Oftentimes I&#x27;ve found that there is some &#x27;problem solving&#x27; that can occur to get you back on track.<p>For example: I missed my flight to BOS to AUS for SXSW one year. Initially it was a &#x27;the next available flight is in a week&#x27; situation, which clearly wasn&#x27;t going to work for me. We went through some problem solving however and found a solution that totally worked. They booked me on a flight instead to DFW or SAT (can&#x27;t remember which), with a layover in CLT. I went on Twitter and found a friend driving to SXSW who was going to pick me up then and take me there from the alternate nearby city. They also put me on standby for a flight from CLT to AUS. The standby totally worked out, and I got to Austin only an hour later than originally anticipated.<p>However, if the person at the gate&#x2F;ticketing doesn&#x27;t feel like helping you then frequently you&#x27;re just kinda screwed. I&#x27;ve had dozens of situations like this where I was able to convince them to try something &#x27;different&#x27; with me and it worked out well.<p>If an App helped me automatically rebook and find my options that I&#x27;d otherwise have to go beg a customer service agent for... that would be awesome. If then I&#x27;m on a connecting flight that something is going to mess up- I could probably have my plans made by the time I&#x27;m off the first plane.

When airlines screw up such as when you miss a connecting flight due to an airline-caused delay, walking to the ticket counter or agent desk gets you paid. If you have a cell phone, a phone call to the airline gets you paid.<p>If you don&#x27;t want to bother with walking to the airline reps in the airport or you are not comfortable interacting with people, AirHelp may be useful.

I am intrigued and tried to submit a claim for a recent domestic (USA) flight. However, the app update for US flights does not appear to have taken effect because I was denied for not being eligible under EU law:<p><a href="http://i.imgur.com/sgDGyZy.png" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;i.imgur.com&#x2F;sgDGyZy.png</a>

Really curious to hear what their success rate is with Ryanair, as they seem to be as consumer unfriendly as possible. (Though I think they have started to change their priorities recently)

So basically this app is a simplified version of this? <a href="http://airconsumer.ost.dot.gov/publications/flyrights.htm#overbooking" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;airconsumer.ost.dot.gov&#x2F;publications&#x2F;flyrights.htm#ov...</a> If you get bumped involuntarily due to overbooking you are due compensation. Else you&#x27;re SOL.

Just as a general PSA (without claiming to be complete):<p>(Generally, none of these apply if the airline can claim extraordinary circumstances such as weather)<p>- Flights Originating&#x2F;Transiting&#x2F;Ending in the EU:<p>1. You are entitled to cash compensation for sufficiently long delays (2-4 hours depending on flight duration) 2. You are entitled to cash compensation (for the inconvenience) and reroute (whenever you want) for a cancellation or cash compensation (for the inconvenience) and a ticket refund<p>If delay is long enough, you are entitled to meals and refreshments, if over-night, to accomodation.<p>- Flights in the US<p>AFAIK, you pretty much are only entitled to something if you get denied boarding on an overbooked flight.<p>However, it&#x27;s always best to just walk up to an airline agent, putting a smile on your face and explaining the situation. They have nothing against you and only help, but you greatly reduce their inclination to do so by making it their personal fault.

What are the statistics on the number of canceled or delayed flights that the average flier has in a year that would qualify for reimbursement?<p>I used to have 40 round trip flights a year not so long ago, and I&#x27;d say that there was probably only one or two flights that were canceled during that duration of time. Occasionally I&#x27;d volunteer to get off a flight to grab a voucher for reimbursement, but most of the time I only got a hotel or other small voucher for a flight cancellation.<p>I understand that Europe provides more compensation for technical problems, but are flight cancellations really that common of an occurrence for non-frequent fliers?

Just curious: in the US, if you were denied boarding, is the airline obligated to compensate you in the form of cash? Or are they allowed to get away with giving you a voucher for the equivalent amount (&quot;store credit&quot;)?

This sounds like an exact clone of the German company flightright, which has been around for several years now. <a href="http://www.flightright.de/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.flightright.de&#x2F;</a>

Flying with US Airways this past week; 8 flights in 4 days, 5&#x2F;8 flights were delayed, causing missed connections, etc.<p>How I wish AirHelp was available in the US :(

Feedback:<p>The airport search fields should recognize airport codes. If I type in &quot;bru&quot;, Brussels airport should be the first, not the third in the list. If I do not choose from the suggestion box, but tab into the next field, it should fill the field with the correct selection.

What a great idea ! so easy to use ! With laws, general conditions, etc... becoming more and more long and complex (even for educated people) I can see this kind of concept taking off in many other fields. cannot wait !

The form should know that travel between MDW and DTW is not eligible before I enter in all my info. Kinda infuriating.

Almost makes me want to fly United again ... almost.

Another startup serving the needs of people who demand to be served.

So concatenate(&quot;Air&quot;,$SAASfeaturename) is the new hip naming convention? I&#x27;ll update the lexicon.