The EU flight compensation laws are pretty specific: if your flight is delayed THREE hours or more (long haul), you can claim $600 euros credit per person—regardless of what you paid for the tickets. That is a huge incentive for airlines to be on time, but before Kat and I ever left on our full time nomadic journey, we had a flight from Los Angeles to Barcelona delayed longer than that. Our 8:40 pm arrival time in Barcelona was long after midnight (forgot the details), so I filed a claim through a third party company. You have probably seen the ads since there are several companies that do it. Initially they asked for a copy of our boarding passes and other details, and I would occasionally follow up with them over the years. By the way, this happened on August 5, 2018, so imagine my surprise when I got an email last week saying that $668 was ready to be deposited in my bank account!!

I had not heard from anyone in a long time, and the carrier, Iberia/ LEVEL air, was poised for bankruptcy at some point, but made it through. I had to double check to make sure the mail was legit, but everything matched and we got our money. The claim settlement was actually 1200 euros (for two), but they keep half, which was fine by me. Getting anything was better than getting nothing, especially since the tickets cost us $338 initially.

If you DO get delayed and are due compensation I encourage you to pursue it