Build a Flight Disruption Rebooking and Compensation Agent

1. 1

   Know the two regimes cold

   EU261 pays 250 to 600 euros cash for qualifying delays of three hours or more and cancellations on covered routes, minus the extraordinary-circumstances defense. The US mandates no delay compensation, but since October 28, 2024 the DOT requires automatic cash refunds for cancellations and significant changes (three-plus hours domestic, six-plus international) when the passenger does not accept rebooking. Every claim decision flows from which regime touches the itinerary.

2. 2

   Monitor flights and detect disruption early

   Flight-status data feeds catch the cancellation before the gate announcement. The first-mover minutes are when rebooking seats still exist, which is why monitoring, not claims, is the subscription's daily value.

3. 3

   Build the disruption playbook

   When a flight breaks: alternative routings to request, the exact rights script for the airline app chat, hotel and meal duty-of-care notes on covered routes, and evidence to capture (announcements, receipts, timestamps) for the claim that follows.

4. 4

   Automate the claims engine

   Determine eligibility from the flight's actual data, generate the correctly-addressed claim with the right legal citations, track airline responses, and escalate stubborn cases to national enforcement bodies or partner lawyers where warranted.

5. 5

   Choose an honest fee structure

   A modest monitoring subscription plus a success percentage on recovered compensation, clearly disclosed, with the US automatic-refund cases handled at low or no success fee since the law already mandates payment. Charging a big cut to 'win' money the DOT requires automatically would be the fast way to lose trust.

6. 6

   Grow on documented wins

   Anonymized case receipts (route, disruption, amount recovered, days taken) are the marketing. Frequent flyers, points communities, and business-travel managers follow proof, and one corporate travel policy win brings hundreds of monitored travelers at once.

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Best for: A travel-obsessed builder who enjoys both APIs and regulatory fine print

Not for: Builders who want passive software without operations. Claims work is a pipeline of stubborn counterparties and slow money; the service wins on persistence, not elegance.