Pricing · one flat fee
One flat fee. Your whole payout.
Check whether the airline owes you for nothing. If it does, $19 buys every letter the fight needs — for that flight and everyone on the booking. The airline pays you directly, and we never touch the money.
No account. The verdict comes before the payment screen.
Flight LH 439, delayed 4 hours 12 minutes: €600 owed per passenger.
FlightOwe is a flat-fee flight compensation claim kit. The eligibility check is free. If a claim looks owed, $19 buys the cited letter, the airline's real submission address, the dated follow-up, the rebuttals, the regulator complaint and a tracker — for one flight and every passenger on the booking.
What a commission actually costs you
A no-win-no-fee claim company takes a percentage of whatever the airline pays. Up to 35% is the rate this comparison is built on. That's fine when the claim is a fight. It's expensive when the claim is a form letter and a date.
| Service | Their cut | You keep |
|---|---|---|
| Claim company · 35% | −€210 | €390 |
| FlightOwe · $19 flat | $19 | €600 |
The $19 is charged in dollars at checkout, not deducted from the payout — the airline transfers the full €600 to you.
Four people on one booking
Compensation is per passenger, and this is where the percentage stops being a rounding error. Four passengers in the €600 band is €2,400 on one claim.
| Service | Their cut | You keep |
|---|---|---|
| Claim company · 35% | −€840 | €1,560 |
| FlightOwe · $19 flat | $19 | €2,400 |
The kit covers the whole booking. It doesn't cost more because more of you were on the flight.
What the $19 buys
Seven things, and they are the seven things that decide whether a claim gets paid or quietly dies in an inbox.
- 01Your claim letter, cited to the regulation and filled in with your route, your delay and your passengers.
- 02Exactly where to send it — the airline's real claim URL, email and postal address, not the customer-service form that goes nowhere.
- 03A follow-up letter, dated for the day it becomes due.
- 04Rebuttals for the six excuses airlines actually use, each with the article or case that answers it.
- 05Your national enforcement body complaint, pre-addressed. There are 18 of them in the kit, from the CAA to the LBA to AESA.
- 06A deadline sheet and small-claims guidance, because the limitation period runs from the flight date and it is short in some countries.
- 07A tracker that tells you what to send next, and when.
The one add-on: +$5
An expense pack of meal, hotel and transfer reimbursement letters. Worth it when you were kept overnight, because those costs are claimable under Art. 9 even in the cases where compensation isn't — a weather cancellation being the obvious one. It starts unticked. If you weren't out of pocket, skip it.
A $39 Frequent Flyer Pass covering a household for a year is built but switched off, so there is nothing recurring you can buy here today and nothing to cancel later. If it opens, it'll be an option beside the $19 kit, never a replacement for it.
FlightOwe, a claim company, or doing it alone
Three real options. The third one is free and it works — the kit exists because most people abandon it around week six, when the airline stops replying.
| FlightOwe | Claim company | On your own | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cost on a €600 claim | $19 | up to €210 | €0 |
| Cost on a €2,400 family claim | $19 | up to €840 | €0 |
| Paid if the claim fails | $19, already paid | Nothing | Nothing |
| Who files | You | They do | You |
| Who the airline pays | You, in full | Them, then you | You, in full |
| Letters written for you | Claim, follow-up, six rebuttals, regulator complaint | Yes | None |
| Deadline tracking | Tracker in the kit | Theirs | Your calendar |
| Works with Ryanair | Yes | Ryanair refuses third-party claims | Yes |
Commission figures use the 35% rate this site compares against. Check the rate in the terms before you sign anything — they vary by company and by country.
The four fair objections
"No-win-no-fee means I risk nothing"
True, and it's the real argument for a claim company. You pay them only out of money you wouldn't otherwise have had. Our $19 is at risk in a way their commission isn't. So run the free check first: it tells you which article applies, which band your distance falls in, and whether the cause the airline gave is one it can hide behind. If the verdict is no, don't buy the kit.
"I could write the letter myself"
You could. The regulation is public and the letter isn't hard. What's hard is knowing that Lufthansa's form rejects attachments over 5 MB, that "operational reasons" isn't a defence, that a technical fault has been rebuttable since CJEU C-549/07, and that the German regulator wants the airline to have had eight weeks before it'll look at you. That's the part the $19 buys.
"Is this going to turn into a subscription?"
No. $19 is charged once, there's no account to create before you can buy, and there's nothing recurring behind it. The annual pass described above isn't switched on.
Who this is wrong for
Anyone whose flight has no EU or UK leg. US domestic delays carry no fixed cash compensation at all — see what US DOT rules actually give you — and a flight into the EU on a non-EU airline sits outside EU261 entirely under Art. 3(1)(b). A cancellation you were told about 14 or more days ahead isn't compensable. Neither is a delay caused by weather, an ATC strike, a security incident or a medical emergency. In every one of those cases the free check says no and you keep your $19.
How the $19 gets spent
-
Check the flight — free
Route, date, how late you landed, what the airline said, how many of you. The engine computes the great-circle distance, picks the band, and tells you the amount and the article it comes from. No account, no card.
-
Buy the kit if the verdict is yes
$19, once. The letters come out filled in — your flight number, your delay, your passengers, the correct currency.
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Send it where the airline actually reads it
The kit names the claim URL, the email and the postal address for your carrier, plus what that carrier characteristically does with claims.
-
Follow up on the date the tracker gives you
Around six weeks for most carriers, longer for TAP and Air France. The follow-up letter is already written and already dated.
-
Escalate to the regulator, free
If they've gone quiet, the pre-addressed complaint to your national enforcement body goes next. Regulators want the airline to have had four to eight weeks first, depending on the country. Airlines that ignore passengers often settle once a regulator is copied in.
The full claim sequence, with the dates, walks through the same five steps in more detail.
Questions people ask before paying
How much does FlightOwe cost?
$19, once, for one disrupted flight and every passenger on that booking. There's one optional add-on at $5 for the expense-reimbursement letters, and it starts unticked. No commission is taken from your payout, because the airline pays you and not us.
Why is a flat fee cheaper than no-win-no-fee?
Because a percentage scales with your claim and a flat fee doesn't. At 35%, a €600 claim costs €210 and a €2,400 family claim costs €840. The kit is $19 either way. The trade is that you file it and you carry the risk of a rejection.
What if the airline refuses to pay?
The kit ships rebuttals for the six excuses airlines actually use, then a pre-addressed complaint to your national enforcement body, then small-claims guidance. We can't promise an outcome — nobody can. What we can do is make sure the claim was argued on the right article and filed before the limitation period ran out.
How much is my flight worth?
Under EU261 it's €250 up to 1,500 km, €400 in the middle band, and €600 over 3,500 km on a non-intra-EU route, per passenger. UK261 mirrors those in sterling at £220, £350 and £520. The EU261 bands are set out in full here.
Do I need an account?
No. The check runs without one and the kit is bought without one. Reminder emails at day 0, 42 and 70 are built but not switched on, so nothing is going to arrive in your inbox uninvited — the tracker is where the dates live.
Does it cost more for a family?
No. Compensation is per passenger but the kit is per flight, so four people at €600 each is €2,400 recovered on one $19 purchase. That's the case where the commission model gets expensive fastest.
Are you a law firm?
No. FlightOwe is an information service, not a law firm and not your legal representative. We tell you what the rules say and give you the letters. You file your own claim and you keep everything you recover.
Does this work for US flights?
Only when a leg touches the EU or the UK. There's no US equivalent of EU261 for delay — the American entitlement is a prompt automatic refund, plus cash for being bumped from an oversold flight under 14 CFR 250.5. A US domestic delay pays no fixed compensation at all.
Find out for free, then decide
The verdict, the amount and the article it comes from — before any payment screen. If the rules say no, we say no.
FlightOwe is an information service, not a law firm and not your legal representative.