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Comment by apollo_mojave | Hacker News Reader

I'm American and once traveled through Europe with my then girlfriend, now wife. We had two (!) flights canceled for mechanical issues -- one on TAP, the other on United. Both cancelations resulted in unplanned overnight stays in Lisbon.

The folks at the service desk at the airport provided us information about our legal rights after we got off the plane, and my wife and I immediately filed claims. Happily we're both attorneys so this sort of thing comes naturally to us.

Between the two of us and two canceled flights, we recovered about USD $2400, which more than paid for our airfare. Honestly, not a bad deal!

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I know people who purposely schedule transatlantic flights with iffy connections and bad on-time records specifically in order to maximize their chance of EU/UK 261 compensation.

What's the compensation under EU/UK 261? Based on a quick search it looks like it's a 250 euros/pounds for a continental flight, and more if it's a trans-atlantic flight. In the latter case, the delay window is up to 4 hours, which seems unlikely barring some natural catastrophe, which would make the delay ineligible for compensation. What sort of a person has the income to spend on transatlantic flights, but is willing to put up with all that hassle for $250?

In the latter case, the delay window is up to 4 hours, which seems unlikely barring some natural catastrophe

It's unlikely that one flight will be over 4 hours late; but the delay time which matters is based on when you reach your final destination. For example, a few years back I was flying LHR-YUL-YVR; the flight from London to Montreal was only 1.5 hour delayed, but that was enough that I missed the last flight of the day from Montreal to Vancouver, and qualified for compensation based on my arrival in Vancouver being 10 hours late.

Indeed. We flew from Stockholm to Hawaii and the SAS flight was late out of Stockholm, which cascaded to us being a full 24h late (same flight next day) to our destination in Hawaii. We got reimbursed without a problem and since we were traveling with an infant it was actually kind of nice to get a free full nights sleep in a hotel near LAX...

As far as i remember it is up to 600 Euro.

I my case I recieved the max compensation because i got delayed a bit over an hour on the first leg of the flight due to problems in loading luggage, which made me miss the connecting flight overseas. Total delay was 10hours. Took them almost a year to pay me back (Lufthansa)

We received €600 each for a flight out of OAK where the plane was late, followed by really late, followed by completely cancelled and rebooked for the next day. Ended up leaving 25 hours later than planned and losing a day from the vacation, but it was a nice payout given that the seats were only $200 to start with.

I did the same for a delayed, then cancelled flight.

I might not have bothered, except they had us waiting for almost 12 hours in the airport, then another 12 hours the next day.

The delay window is difference in arrival time. If you have one flight rescheduled you have a pretty good time of making that unless there’s 10s of flights per day to the same destination.

I recently got £520 for Virgin Austin-Heathrow being late. That's the post Brexit version of 600 euro. Plus food and accom. Virgin were quite good about it and paid up straight away. Computer problem on the plane - they tried restarting the computers but the thing wouldn't work.

IIRC, it does depend on distance and time, and it maxes out at about $600.

What about the US, I faced a mechanical issue traveling from Austin (Texas) to Vancouver (Canada). The result was 10 hours delay (rebooked on a flight next morning), a free night at the hotel. The hotel was so terrible though (a 4 star, but I found greasy light switches and bugs in the room, that I turned around and went back sleeping in the airport, I didn't want to bring home bedbugs by any chance.

Should you also get compensated economically for this? I never pursued it since they brought me back home without me paying anything else. I guess I did have to pay for a breakfast

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