A claim built on the record, not on a form you fill in from memory

1. You give us a flight number and a date

That is all the check needs. We do not ask for your name, booking or payment to give you the verdict. Flights from the last 180 days are checked automatically. The date is the day the flight was due to depart, in local time where it left.

2. We pull three public records

• The flight record (AeroDataBox): scheduled and actual gate times at both ends, cancellation or diversion status, the operating airline and the great-circle distance that sets your compensation band.
• Eurocontrol's daily airport delay record: every minute of air-traffic-management arrival delay attributed to each European airport, by cause code, since 2019. Weather, ATC strikes, ATC staffing, equipment failures and capacity restrictions all appear here when they happen. We check both airports on your day.
• METAR weather observations at both airports in a six-hour window around your flight: visibility, gusts, thunderstorms, snow, fog, freezing rain.

3. The engine applies the regulation

Which regulation covers the route and the carrier, whether the arrival delay reaches three hours (or the cancellation notice rules apply), the distance band, the amount per passenger, and the limitation date. It applies the leading cases the airlines lean on: technical faults are not extraordinary (Huzar v Jet2.com, van der Lans v KLM), nor is a strike by the airline's own staff (Airhelp v SAS). Then it grades the likely “extraordinary circumstances” defence from the records: low when nothing shows up that day, high when Eurocontrol logged heavy weather or air traffic control delay at your airports or a national air traffic control failure hit your flight. When the risk is high the check says compensation is unlikely and explains why: only the part of a delay the event caused is deducted (Pešková, C-315/15), but airlines usually win these.

4. You decide

The verdict page is free and stays free. If you want the letter, it is £4.99, written from the verified facts with the regulation, the article, the amount, the anticipated defence and the evidence in it. The £9.99 pack adds the follow-up letter for a refusal, the evidence appendix and the escalation route to the free ADR scheme. You send it. We never contact the airline.

What we will never do

• Take a percentage of your compensation or handle the money.
• Contact the airline, the ADR scheme or a court on your behalf.
• Give you legal advice about your individual case. We are not a law firm and not a claims management company.
• Hide that you can do this for free without us.

Accuracy

Gate times come from the airline's own operational data feeds where available; where only touchdown is recorded we say so and note that doors typically open 5 to 10 minutes later. Eurocontrol data is published monthly, about two weeks after the month ends, so the latest weeks are not in yet. For those days the check says the delay-cause data is not yet published and never treats the gap as a point in your favour. If any fact in a letter you paid for is wrong, tell us and we correct it or refund you.

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