Under EU/UK legislation, consumers are eligible for compensation if their flights are delayed or cancelled due to reasons within a carrier’s control. This would rule out natural disasters, for example, but include reasons such as ‘an air steward was ill’.
Passengers are able to claim compensation based on the length of the delay and distance being travelled, and there’s some excellent documentation on the subject here:
The process for claiming compensation is convoluted and has spawned a mini industry of copycat legal firms who’ll do the heavy lifting on behalf of customers (for a fee).
Many of these firms provide free online tools (e.g. this one) for checking the validity of a claim. Whilst it’s trivial to check the status of any given flight (e.g. delayed by x minutes, distance, destinations, etc.), determining the airline’s provided reason for a delay is less obvious.
Is anyone familiar with an API or dataset that might provide this data? I’ve found a provider for US domestic flights (https://www.bts.gov/explore-topics-and-geography/topics/airline-time-performance-and-causes-flight-delays) but nothing for those operating within Europe.
Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.
submitted by /u/trilson
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