Claims companies vs doing it yourself: the honest maths

Flight compensation claims firms advertise heavily and are not a scam. They do real work and they win real claims. The question is narrower than that: given that the amount is fixed by law, is a quarter to a half of it a fair price for the work involved in your case? This guide does the arithmetic band by band, describes what you actually have to do instead, and sets out the specific situations where a firm genuinely earns its cut.

Why the fee is pure subtraction

In most legal disputes the size of the award is contested, so a skilled representative can increase it. Air passenger compensation does not work that way. Article 7 fixes the amount by distance band, and the only live questions are binary - was the flight covered, did you arrive three or more hours late, was the cause extraordinary. Nobody argues about whether £350 should have been £480.

That means a claims firm cannot win you more than you would win yourself. It can only win the same amount and take a share of it. Whether that trade is worth making depends entirely on how much work your particular claim needs, which for a straightforward delay with a clear arrival time is one form and one follow-up email.

The maths, band by band

Typical fees run from about 25% to about 50% once VAT and administration charges are included. Here is what that leaves you per passenger.

Now multiply. Compensation is per passenger, so the fee is per passenger too. A family of four whose long-haul flight lands five hours late has a claim worth £2,080 under UK261. At a 35% fee they receive £1,352 and the firm receives £728. At 50% the split is £1,040 each way. The work involved in claiming for four people on one booking is not four times the work of claiming for one, but the fee is charged four times over.

The comparison at the other end of the scale is less stark but still real. On a £220 short-haul claim for one person, a 40% fee costs £88 to avoid perhaps forty minutes of admin, which some people will happily pay and others will not.

What doing it yourself actually involves

1. Confirm coverage and the amount. Ten minutes, or one pass through the checker. The regimes are compared in UK261 vs EU261.
2. Gather the evidence. Booking reference, boarding passes, and above all the actual arrival time. Covered in proving your claim.
3. Send one clear message. Flight details, the arrival delay, the article and the figure. The template is in claiming it yourself, for free.
4. Answer the refusal if one comes. Usually a single paragraph naming the case law in extraordinary circumstances explained.
5. Escalate for free after eight weeks. AviationADR, CEDR or CAA PACT, all free to passengers, as set out in the escalation ladder.

Total active time for a clean claim is well under two hours spread over a few weeks. The calendar time is long, but almost all of it is waiting rather than working, and a claims firm waits exactly as long as you would. The CAA's passenger guidance on delays and cancellations sets out the same route in a few pages, free of charge.

When a firm is genuinely worth it

• The facts are properly contested. If the airline has produced technical logs, meteorological reports or crew records to support an extraordinary circumstances defence, and you would have to unpick them, professional help is worth paying for.
• The airline is outside any UK ADR scheme. Free escalation stops at PACT, which cannot bind the carrier, so the only remaining route is court. A firm that litigates routinely is better placed than a first-timer.
• The carrier is foreign and hard to serve. Cross-border enforcement is the one part of this process where specialist experience really tells.
• The booking is complicated. Large groups, multi-leg itineraries through several carriers, or claims tangled up with a package holiday organiser.
• You know yourself. If the alternative is that the claim never gets sent, 60% of £520 beats 100% of nothing. This is the honest reason most people use a firm, and it is a perfectly rational one.

Reading the terms before you sign

If you do use a firm, five clauses are worth finding. Whether VAT sits on top of the quoted percentage or inside it. Whether a separate administration or transfer fee applies. Whether the fee is calculated on the gross recovery, which would include reimbursed care costs and receipts that are simply your own money coming back. What happens if the airline pays you directly after you have signed, because some agreements still charge the full fee in that situation. And whether you have granted exclusivity, which can stop you pursuing the claim yourself if the firm loses interest.

Also check what counts as a win. An agreement that treats a travel voucher as a successful outcome can leave you owing a cash fee against a non-cash recovery.

The short version

For a delay with a clear arrival time, on an airline in a UK ADR scheme, with a booking you can produce - claim it yourself and keep all of it. The process is genuinely free up to the door of the court, and the airline is required to provide a free route to claim. For a contested defence, an unreachable carrier or a claim you would otherwise abandon, a firm is a reasonable purchase. Just make the decision after you know the number, not before, and be clear that you are buying convenience rather than a better outcome.