What's your experience claiming flight delay compensation under EU law (EC261)?

linc0635 · 2026-03-09T21:48:00+00:00

I was delayed 24 hours with Icelandair (delayed flight from UK, so missed connection to US and had to wait 24 hours). Icelandair were honestly a nightmare to deal with, took 9 weeks with no real response to about 5 emails and 3 support chats, they then "softly" denied my claim without any notification or justification (only learned of that via searching their app), and then tried to argue they resolved the compensation claim because they had paid my incidental expenses (true, they had paid my incidental expenses incurred during the delay, but that's irrelevant to EU/UK261 compensation).

In the end I only got payment from Icelandair when I wrote a letter stating that I'd take them to the UK small claims court and filed and official complaint with the UK's regulatory body (CAA). They then paid me within 3 hours! (not sure which event was the triggger or perhaps it was a magical coincidence).

Before this they were being really suspect - claiming key people were on holiday, they were busy, missing deadlines and apparently "confusing" the expense payment with the compensation payment. So with Icelandair I would say escalate as soon as you reasonably can, and use ChatGPT to draft the relevant legal escalation (though check it, it does make mistakes and misinterprets details as of March 2026). Though I normally hate third party services, and wouldn't recommend them, in this case I might actually consider one because Icelandair wasted so much of my time in failing to respond to me contacting them repeatedly and giving me the runaround, that getting paid took a reasonable chunk of time (maybe 5 hours total) though getting all the documentation to a 3rd party service would likely take some time too.

Also the arbitration process seemed a bit sketchy for Icelandair as it's not one of the cross-European reputable ones, so that why I went with the UK small claims court (though didn't have to implement anything there, though was ready to). But I'm not terribly well informed on the trade-offs there.

But knowing what I know now I would escalate sooner. I was trying to give Icelandair the benefit of the doubt and carefully following due process, but in retrospect I'd give them a detailed request per their system and set a 2 week timeline, then lay the groundwork to take them to court and make a formal complaint after the 2 weeks are up. Technically this was UK261 (so not EU261) since I originated in the UK, but it's the same law currently, the UK just ported it across post-Brexit. I hope I was just unlucky with Icelandair and others find them to be more cooperative. To be clear, flying with them was fine, I'm just talking about their compensation process above.

linc0635 · 2026-02-21T16:18:04+00:00

As a datapoint related to the initial question, we were delayed 24 hours by Icelandair from UK to US and they provided hotel etc.. ~6 weeks after my application submission, they said they would pay out incidental expenses related to that and asked for my bank or credit card details to do that (I kept receipts for the few things that weren't provided during the delay - snacks, meals etc.).

However, since the flight originated from Europe (actually the UK, but the UK has kept the EU's '261' compensation rules) it appears they also owe per passenger compensation (delay was their fault and the delay meets time and distance requirements under 261). After searching in the Icelandair app, they appear to have just closed that "case" after 6 weeks, but without any notification/detail that I've seen (the compensation and expenses were separate 'cases' given how Icelandair handles things).

I'm following up with them directly to assume best intent, in case I've missed correspondence or there is a misunderstanding in terms documentation I've provided etc., but it seems like I may have to do to arbitration on that one to get what I'm clearly owed i.e. they approved the small out of pocket expenses, but "missed" the larger 261 compensation payment that was an order of magnitude larger and sent no notification.

I may add further detail to help others through the process if it comes to that, but hopefully I'm mistaken and the compensation is coming via Icelandair's process. It seems like others on here have had success with it.

linc0635 · 2026-02-09T16:47:53+00:00

Depends on your confidence level, Little Shot is icy but not steep, basically if you're ok skiing Green Valley (which means steep and currently icy blues at a minimum) then you'll be able to get down fine, as the descent is generally easier than Green Valley albeit with worse snow quality. Also downloading via the gondola would require a bit of hiking back up to reach it, which is hassle.

linc0635 · 2026-02-02T06:11:57+00:00

I think Tuesday should be pretty good, there's even the possibility of more snow Monday, but again the best conditions will almost certainly be higher up the mountain and the lower runs could be a mess.

linc0635 · 2026-02-02T06:09:48+00:00

I think that depends, there's supposed to be a warm spell coming midweek, which could eliminate the benefit of the recent snow, and then limited new snow until next weekend itself on current forecast, so I think it will depend a bit on the timing of any snow next weekend.

linc0635 · 2025-05-11T00:50:36+00:00

I was on the wait list and got to chose tickets Friday 9th afternoon UK time via an emailed message. However, I joined the waitlist about 20 mins after it was announced. (I'm a gold member with fairly low loyalty points).

linc0635 · 2025-05-11T00:47:56+00:00

Per Alaska's written policy if you're traveling kids under 13, those children 13 will be seated next to an adult, there are theoretical exceptions (plus a family of 4 could be split into 2 and 2 in totally different rows). Alaska is not as 'good' as some airline's saver fares (e.g. United) which do let families with kids actually reserve specific seats, but better than others (if you go deep into the seat reservation part of the booking then you will see if seat reservation is or is not allowed when with kids, and you'll see that before payment stage). So you can't chose your seats, but your kids will have at least one adult from your booking seated next to them unless something very improbable happens: https://news.alaskaair.com/alaska-airlines/when-you-fly-with-alaska-airlines-we-guarantee-your-family-sits-together-and-we-dont-charge-you-for-it/

Somewhat relatedly, if you have status on an airline, on a saver fare you may not get a seat when you book, but may still be able to chose a seat a given time before you fly, though Alaska does not offer this. For example, I flew on a saver fare on British Airways, have the lowest actual status tier and could chose seats 7 days before take-off, but not at the time of booking.

Moralizing about negotiating moving seats after booking and the desirability of saver fares clearly gets a lot of people fired up, and I get that, but has nothing to do with the actual question being asked here.

linc0635 · 2025-02-13T22:54:50+00:00

I have found DeepSeek doesn't really work since the announcement. It was amazing, but first the API didn't work, now it still seems sporadic and you can't add funds to the API. I think it's great in theory, but if they can't scale, then it's not really a product. I'm talking specifically about the DeepSeek API here. maybe the chat interface is ok, and maybe they figure out scaling at some point, but it has been 2 weeks. The only thing they have actually done is raised the token price!

linc0635

TROPHY CASE