Airline rejected flight delay compensation for extraordinary circumstances
Airlines often deny compensation claims by blaming extraordinary circumstances like equipment failures, leaving passengers with meager payouts or ignored requests. This blocks travelers from securing the full cash compensation they are owed and makes it nearly impossible to resolve disputes even with recorded evidence.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Submitting compensation claims directly through the airlineDid this help you?
- 2Failing alternative dispute resolution (ADR) schemesDid this help you?
- 3Reaching out to aviation regulatory authoritiesDid this help you?
- 4Considering third-party claims companiesDid this help you?
- 5calling and asking about every single purchase beforehandDid this help you?
- 6recording conversations and keeping recordsDid this help you?
- 7Contacting live support agents for status updates and being told to wait longerDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Waiting 5 months from Air Help to give me $ from April Lufthansa strike. Is this normal?”source ↗
“I submitted a claim through Air Help (very regretting it now) and I'm still waiting on them to provide me back with compensation amount.”source ↗
“Whenever I chat with Air Help live agent, they only tell me that Lufthansa agreed to pay $ amount, but only portion were sent to Air Help. They only tell me to wait longer until Lufthansa releases the full amount. Is this normal? I've been waiting 5 months now...”source ↗
“on 08/09 my flight was significantly delayed by 7 hours from Corfu to Shannon.”source ↗
“So far I have already tried to make a compensation claim through Ryanair, but they rejected it because the delay was due to extraordinary circumstances, specifically failure of the NATS equipment.”source ↗
“3 days delayed and they claim they will do a 50 euro lump sum per day for a total of 150 Euro.”source ↗
“they say they don’t even compensate a taxi trip which was caused by the fact that they lied about planning for a time slot to leave the bags once they were found.”source ↗
“now they walked back on everything. everything is recorded as well and we asked for the recordings, yet nothing.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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- 2Getting bounced between support reps after a delayed delivery
- 6Customer claiming food or packages weren't delivered despite proof