Ways to claim flight compensation, and what each one costs you

This page is the route chooser. It sits above two others: our step-by-step walkthrough of the free route and our breakdown of what AirHelp charges. If you already know which way you are going, those two go deeper than this one does.

What the claim is worth

The amount does not depend on your ticket price, your airline or how well you argue. It depends on the distance flown and how late you reached your destination. These are the figures the Civil Aviation Authority publishes, checked on 20 August 2026.

Hold those three numbers. Every percentage below turns into pounds against them, and the arithmetic is the whole argument.

Doing it yourself, start to finish

The airline is the first stop and there is no way to skip it. Most carriers run a compensation form on their own site. Where there is no form, customer relations by email does the same job.

What goes in the claim is short and factual: the flight number, the date, the scheduled arrival time, the actual arrival time, the length of the delay, and the amount you are claiming for each passenger. Booking reference and boarding passes if you still have them. No legal argument is required, because you are not arguing about the amount. The amount is in the table above.

You have six years from the flight in England and Wales, and five years in Scotland. That is the single most underused fact in this subject. A flight that went wrong in 2021 is very often still claimable, and the airline has no duty to tell you so.

Our walkthrough of the free route has the wording, what to gather, and what to do when the reply is a refusal.

Free escalation when the airline says no

A refusal is not the end. There are two independent schemes the Civil Aviation Authority has approved to decide these disputes, plus the authority’s own team for airlines that belong to neither. All three are free to you.

You do not choose which one you get. Your airline belongs to one of them, and that decides it.

The two schemes do not perform alike, and the gap is wide enough to matter. In the last quarter the Civil Aviation Authority has published, October to December 2025, CEDR found for the passenger in 73 per cent of the 1,767 cases it decided, with an average award of £834. AviationADR found for the passenger in 38 per cent of the 10,206 cases it decided, with an average award of £587. The authority’s own team upheld 50 per cent of the 1,444 cases it handled.

Read that as a fact about the scheme lottery, not as advice. Nobody gets to pick, and a weaker scheme is still free, still independent, and still better than giving up.

The small claims route, and what it costs

If the airline refuses and the scheme route runs out, a money claim online is the last step. It covers claims up to £100,000 against a defendant in the UK, and for a compensation claim it is a form rather than a courtroom.

The issue fee depends on the amount you are claiming. These are the figures in the Ministry of Justice fee schedule that came into force in July 2026, so ignore any page still quoting the older scale.

The free tools

Two free tools come up constantly, and both are what they say they are.

MoneySavingExpert runs free reclaim tools that draft your complaint for you. Its own position is that there is no need to pay anyone to claim, and that because the tools are free you keep the whole compensation. It does not rule out no-win-no-fee firms entirely, and names Bott and Co as an acceptable last resort, but it treats them as a last resort rather than a first move.

Resolver is a free complaints tool that the Civil Aviation Authority itself describes as free and independent. It packages your complaint and keeps the correspondence in one place. The catch is the one above: some airlines will not accept a complaint routed through a third party, and Resolver is a third party for that purpose.

Citizens Advice publishes free step-by-step guidance on writing the claim yourself. No tool, no account, no fee.

What the paid firms charge

A no-win-no-fee firm writes the letters, chases the airline, and goes legal if it has to. If you would otherwise never send the claim, that is a real service and it is worth real money. The airline pays the same amount either way, so the whole fee comes out of your side of the table.

Every fee below is the firm’s own published figure, read from its own fee page on 20 August 2026, with the link in the sources at the foot of this page. One firm in this market is a solicitors’ practice rather than a claims company, and that is flagged in the table: Bott and Co is authorised and regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority under number 605593. The others are not law firms and do not need that authorisation, because flight compensation is not one of the six claims sectors the Financial Conduct Authority regulates.

The worst case is worth stating in pounds. On a £520 award, a claim that ends up in legal action leaves you £260 at AirHelp, £260 at Skycop, £260 at AirAdvisor, £277 at Flightright and £312 at Compensair. Bott and Co is £258 whether it settles on the first letter or goes all the way, because its flat fee does not change and it absorbs the court fees.

That last point is the one people miss when they compare headline percentages. A 42 per cent fee with VAT added lands in almost the same place as a 50 per cent fee with VAT included. Compare on the number that actually leaves your compensation, not on the number in the advert.

AirHelp’s price list puts legal action at around 3 per cent of cases, so the 50 per cent worst case is not the ordinary outcome. Its subscription, AirHelp Plus, removes both fees for members and covers compensation up to £520, which changes the arithmetic entirely if you fly often enough to use it.

One name you may still see in comparison articles has gone. AirHelp acquired ClaimCompass, announced in November 2024, and claimcompass.eu now redirects to AirHelp. It is not a separate option any more.

Our page on AirHelp’s fees works through the same figures on a single claim, including the cases where paying is the rational choice.

Where Untap fits

We detect and guide. You forward or upload a booking confirmation, we read it, match it against the UK compensation rules, and tell you which flights qualify and what they are worth. Then we hand you the claim to send yourself.

We do not file claims, we do not take a percentage, and we never see your bank account. The airline pays you direct, in full. It is free while we work out a sensible business model, and being the option that charges nothing and takes nothing is the only claim we are making here. The table above is doing the rest of the arguing.

What that does not cover: if you want somebody to run the whole dispute, chase the airline for months and take it to court, we are not that and one of the firms above is.

Choosing your route

• A clear delay of three hours or more, and you have an hour: claim direct. It is free, the amount is fixed, and the airline pays you in full.
• The airline said no, or went quiet: go to whichever complaint scheme your airline belongs to, or to the Civil Aviation Authority if it belongs to neither. Free, and a scheme decision binds the airline.
• The scheme route is exhausted and you are sure of your ground: issue a money claim online. £35 to £70 for a single passenger, recoverable if you win.
• You are not going to do it, and you know yourself: use a no-win-no-fee firm. Keeping between about half and 70 per cent of the compensation beats keeping all of one you never claim. Compare on the fee after VAT, not the headline.
• The airline is disputing the facts, or the money is large: this is where a solicitors’ firm earns its fee, and where the regulator behind it is worth something.
• You fly often and disruption is routine: price a subscription against the fees you would otherwise pay per claim, and remember the free routes are still free.
• You are not sure whether an old flight even qualifies: that is the gap we fill. Six years of bookings are still live and most people never check.

Sources

• Compensation amounts: Civil Aviation Authority, flight delays, read 20 August 2026. The rules themselves are the retained Regulation (EC) No 261/2004, commonly called UK261.
• Time limits: section 9 of the Limitation Act 1980 for the six year period in England and Wales, confirmed for flight compensation claims by the Court of Appeal in Dawson v Thomson Airways Ltd [2014] EWCA Civ 845, with permission to appeal refused by the Supreme Court on 31 October 2014. The five year period in Scotland comes from the Prescription and Limitation (Scotland) Act 1973.
• Complaint schemes, membership and uphold rates: Civil Aviation Authority scheme page and its published passenger complaints data for the fourth quarter of 2025, the most recent quarter published as at 20 August 2026. AviationADR’s own statement that its scheme is free to passengers is on its about page.
• Court fees: Ministry of Justice schedule EX50A, July 2026 edition, civil and family court fees, section A, money claims issue fee.
• Firm fees, all read on 20 August 2026 from each firm’s own published page: AirHelp (page dated 11 August 2026), AirHelp Plus, Bott and Co, Flightright, Skycop, AirAdvisor and Compensair’s own payment policy document.
• Regulation: the Solicitors Regulation Authority number for Bott and Co Solicitors Ltd is 605593, from its own site. Flight compensation is not one of the six claims management sectors regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, which is why the other firms listed here need no such authorisation.
• Airlines refusing third-party complaints: Civil Aviation Authority, tips on complaining.
• Free tools: MoneySavingExpert, Resolver and Citizens Advice.

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