TripIt and AirHelp partnership for flight compensation

by Anshul
9 comments
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Last week, I received a surprise email from TripIt about a possible compensation I may be owed for a flight I took back in October 2015! The email title read “SWISS may owe you $467.00 for your disrupted flight to Montreal”. It had my complete attention.

TripIt and AirHelp partnership for flight compensation

TripIt is my favourite travel app that helps with organizing and managing my trips. Now, TripIt has partnered with AirHelp (TripIt Pro feature) to help clients claim flight compensations that they maybe eligible for.

AirHelp is a service that specializes in helping air passengers get compensation for delayed, canceled, and overbooked flights. While it does not “cost” anything to submit a claim, AirHelp does take a chunky cut as service fee. AirHelp does not charge any Service Fee unless your claim is successful.

As part of the TripIt and AirHelp partnership, TripIt scanned my trips to and from Europe, from last three years to see if I qualified for any compensations. Seems like they did find a flight from Zurich to Montreal that was delayed by more than 3 hours, ‘without any reason provided’. My flight was eligible for compensation under EU Reg. 261/2004, which protects passengers against lengthy delays and other travel disruptions.

TripIt and AirHelp partnership

Claim Eligible segment: Zurich – Montreal, delayed by 3+ hours

TripIt and AirHelp partnership

Compensation for ZRH – YUL segment delay, with 35% AirHelp service fee

 

Submitting my claim was easy, the link provided in email directed me to the AirHelp dashboard which had imported trip details from TripIt already – very efficient. I verified a few details and submitted my claim through AirHelp, it would be interesting to see what comes of it.

Take Away

This is a great service add on by TripIt for its ‘Pro’ members. I like to keep on top of all my claims and am normally diligent in calling out the airlines on anything that warrants a compensation. While I won’t proactively use AirHelp to claim compensation, if TripIt wants to alert me of situations where I could be eligible, I couldn’t be happier. Unlike me, if you couldn’t be bothered with spending hours to claim what is owed to you, AirHelp can be a great service and the new partnership with TripIt is a great initiative.

9 comments

size12font comments on "Show HN: AirHelp flight scanner finds all past flights and checks for eligibility" January 18, 2018 - 6:26 am

[…] We love Tripit! We love them so much we have a partnership with them: https://travelupdate.com/tripit-airhelp-partner… […]

Reply
Elena Carbayo January 17, 2018 - 11:14 am

Hmmm, although I know that airlines get away with a lot of ‘anti-customer’ practices, I don’t like this ‘trip compensation’ thing. Of course I do NOT mean the right to be treated fairly by an airline, but the setting of this specific ‘compensation’ as described in this article. It smells too much of ambulance chasers. For me it paints the image of lawsuit lawyers looking for yet another niche to plunder, and I’d be darned if I allow uncallous greediness to use me as a tool, accessing my travel data, measuring any flight delay down to the second as well as any cancellation in the hope to get their fingers in the airlines business cookie jar. Any mail I’d get that said “such and such may owe you so much” would raise a big red flag without even reading further. It sounds awfully familiar to an action class lawsuit letter. Besides, we know what happens when a business sector ‘loses’ a lot of money to litigation lawyers, right? Exactly, prices go up. Thanks but no thanks.

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Anshul January 18, 2018 - 7:25 am

I agree. As I mentioned in the blog, I would never use any service to claim compensation as such but proceeded with this as a test-run/data point. I don’t mind tripit scanning my trips and send me alerts though, I am not obliged to use their service to claim. Once I get the notification, I can look into it and proceed myself. Airhelp is not alone in that space, several other services out there – I liked your ambulance chasers analogy 🙂

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John January 14, 2018 - 10:14 am

I appreciate the EU flight delay compensation rules. However, I don’t think the process is that difficult to just address directly with the airline. I’m not paying some middleman a $250 cut from the compensation owed. Just email SWISS directly with the claim.

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Anshul January 14, 2018 - 4:47 pm

Yep, i would notmally donit myself too. This one is a test run to see how the tripit/airhelp partnership works. Also this was a bit of a “welcome surprise” from a flight taken in 2015!

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patjem January 14, 2018 - 7:27 am

I got this spam message too from TripIt. Although I opted out for commercial messages form third parties. What does flying get better or cheaper than only this claim farms? His claims must stop

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Anshul January 14, 2018 - 7:58 am

This is def not spam. Are you implying that flying gets more expensive because of consumer claims? What about passenger rights? When passengers are not given whats due to them, does flying get cheaper?

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patjem January 14, 2018 - 9:37 am

Yes iT is. Why should an airline pay 250€ When you only paid €24 for an Ryan air ticket for example? That is nonsense. I agree with rights. But these air help companies, or claim forms charge 30% and only the easy low hanging fruit. They are not here for your rights. They are here for the big money

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Anshul January 14, 2018 - 10:29 am

Absolutely, airhelp and others are just like any other company, looking to make a buck.

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