Founders and executives fly a lot, and a fair share of those flights go wrong. A cancellation two days before departure. A delay that turns a day trip to Munich into a missed dinner. An overbooked flight home on a Friday.

Under European law, many of those disruptions are worth €250 to €600 per passenger, in cash. Yet most people who are owed that money never get it. Not because the rules are unclear, but because claiming is admin: find the email, work out whether the flight qualifies, find the right address, write the letter, follow up for weeks. Or hand a third of the payout to a claims agency.

That is exactly the kind of work an assistant should do. Here is how the rules work, what the 2026 revision changes, and what we are building at Prio.

EU261 in plain language

Regulation (EC) No 261/2004, usually called EU261, protects you when your flight is cancelled, heavily delayed or overbooked.

Which flights. Every flight departing from an airport in the EU, Iceland, Norway or Switzerland, whatever the airline. And flights arriving there from outside, if the airline is European. The UK kept the same rules after Brexit as UK261, with amounts in pounds.

How much. The amount depends on distance, not on what you paid for the ticket:

€250 for flights up to 1,500 km;
€400 for flights within the EU over 1,500 km, and other flights between 1,500 and 3,500 km;
€600 for longer flights. The airline may halve this if you arrived no more than four hours late.

Under UK261 the equivalent amounts are £220, £350 and £520.

When. You are entitled to compensation when:

you arrive at your final destination three hours or more late. This comes from the Court of Justice's Sturgeon ruling in 2009, and "arrival" means the moment the aircraft doors open, not touchdown;
your flight is cancelled less than 14 days before departure, unless the airline offered a replacement close enough to your original times;
you are denied boarding against your will because the flight was overbooked.

When not. The airline doesn't owe compensation if the disruption was caused by extraordinary circumstances it could not have avoided: severe weather, air traffic control restrictions, security threats, political unrest. Be sceptical when you hear this. "Operational reasons" and most technical faults do not count, and airlines cite extraordinary circumstances more often than the courts accept them.

Cash, not vouchers. Compensation is paid in money. A voucher is only allowed if you agree to it in writing. If an airline offers you a voucher, you may say no.

How long you have

Today, the deadline to claim is set by national law, and it differs a lot. In the Netherlands it is two years, in Germany three, in France five. In England and Wales it is six. So a flight that went wrong last year, or even the year before, may still be worth claiming.

What the 2026 revision changes

After more than a decade of negotiation, the EU agreed a revision of EU261 in June 2026. The European Parliament approved it in July, the Council followed, and the act was signed on 16 September 2026. At the time of writing it has not yet been published in the Official Journal. It will apply twelve months after it enters into force, so realistically from late 2027.

For anyone who flies for work, four points matter:

The amounts stay the same. €250, €400 and €600. Earlier proposals to raise the delay threshold to four or six hours did not make it into the final text.
The three-hour rule stays. Arrive more than three hours late and you are entitled to compensation, as today.
The airline has to tell you. Within 96 hours after a disrupted journey, the airline must send you information about your right to compensation and how to request it.
The claim is still yours, and the clock gets shorter. Compensation is paid "upon request", not automatically. You will have to submit that request within nine months of the flight. The airline then has 30 days to pay or explain why not.

The last point is the one to remember. Today a forgotten claim can wait two or three years. From late 2027, a delayed flight that nobody follows up on is lost after nine months.

Why most people still don't claim

A study for the European Commission estimated that in 2018 about 37.5% of eligible passengers successfully claimed their compensation, up from 8% in 2011. That is progress, and it still means most of the money stays with the airlines.

Claims agencies fill part of that gap, at a price. AirHelp, one of the largest, charges a 35% service fee including VAT, plus another 15% if the case goes to court. On a €400 claim, that is €140 to €200 you never see.

The work itself is not hard. It is just fiddly, and it lands in the busiest part of your week: right after a trip.

What we are building at Prio

Prio already reads your mail to prepare your day. Flight confirmations, delay notices and cancellation emails are in there too. So we are teaching Prio to do the claim for you, from first email to payout, without taking a cut.

A few design choices we care about:

The rules are code, not a guess. Whether a flight qualifies and for how much is decided by a fixed rules engine built on the regulation and the court rulings that interpret it, including the distance bands, the three-hour rule, cancellation notice periods and flights moved forward. The AI only reads facts out of your mail: which flight, what time, what happened. It never decides eligibility.
It asks when it doesn't know. If an email doesn't say when you actually landed, Prio asks you with one tap instead of assuming. If the airline cited weather, you see that, and why it may or may not hold.
It looks back once. When you switch it on, Prio searches the last two years of your mail one time, in English, Dutch, German and French, and tells you in one line what you may be owed. No stream of cards.
The letter waits for you. Prio drafts the claim to the airline's verified claims address. Like every email with your name on it, it waits in your approval queue until you approve it. Then Prio follows up if the airline goes quiet, and tracks the answer: paid, rejected, a voucher offer, or a request for more information.
You keep all of it. The compensation goes from the airline to you.

We are testing this on our own inboxes now, and we will bring it to Prio users once it has proven itself on real claims. If you fly often and want to be among the first, write to hello@prio.sh.

What you can do today, with or without Prio

Keep the evidence. Your booking confirmation, boarding pass and any email or text from the airline about the disruption.
Note when you actually arrived. Doors open, not wheels down. A screenshot of the time is enough.
Ask for the reason, in writing. It decides whether extraordinary circumstances apply.
Claim from the airline first. Most airlines have a claims form or address. If they refuse without a good reason, the national enforcement body or an alternative dispute resolution scheme in the country of departure can help.
Don't accept a voucher by reflex. You are entitled to money.

We wrote earlier about the real cost of email for founders. This is the other side of that ledger: sometimes the inbox owes you.

Your inbox knows which airline owes you money