How Much Client Compensation Went Unclaimed in Your Book Last Year? (The Math)
Here's an uncomfortable exercise for any advisor who books Europe: estimate how much compensation your clients were legally owed last year — and how much of it anyone actually claimed. You don't need precise data. Three rough numbers get you close enough to feel it.
The three numbers
1. Europe-touching trips per year. Count itineraries, not flights — anything departing an EU/UK airport (any airline) or arriving there on an EU/UK carrier is in scope for EC261/UK261.
2. Qualifying disruption rate. Across a normal year, long delays (3h+ at arrival) and short-notice cancellations hit a low single-digit share of flights — call it 3–6% of trips depending on season, hubs, and airlines. Summer storm season and strike-prone hubs run hotter; your book of August CDG connections knows this already.
3. Average payout per disrupted trip. Compensation is per passenger — €250/€400/€600 by distance. A disrupted couple on a long-haul is €1,200; a family of four mid-haul is €1,600. A conservative blended figure per disrupted trip: €800–€1,200.
A worked example
A TYPICAL EUROPE-FOCUSED BOOK
Halve every assumption and it's still nearly €4,000 of your clients' money, every year, going mostly unclaimed — because industry estimates consistently find only a small minority of eligible passengers ever file. Not 60%. A small minority.
Why "unclaimed" is the default
Your clients don't know the rules. The airline won't tell them. The claim window is long (up to six years in parts of the UK) but memory is short, and the first boilerplate rejection ends most attempts. The compensation system works — it just requires someone who knows it exists and refuses to forget. Historically, that someone has been nobody.
Making it zero-effort
The advisor who captures this money for clients doesn't do it with vigilance — nobody watches 150 itineraries by hand. They do it with plumbing: every booking forwarded automatically, every flight monitored, every qualifying disruption surfaced with a prepared claim. That's what MyAirAdvocate is — the noticing machine.
Want the fastest gut-check? Pick a client flight you know went badly last year and run it through the free checker. If money was on the table then, it usually still is.