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How we verify facts, calculations and datasets

Checked Policy · 8 min read

15 September 2026 is the checked date behind every fact on this site, and each fact traces back to a primary source and a specific article or section. No outside lawyer or review board signs these pages off: the method below does that job, in the open. Below: the fact check, the calculator, the two datasets, the claim-company criteria and the re-check triggers.

A fact needs three things before it reaches any page: a primary-source URL, the exact article or section, and a checked date, 15 September 2026 for every row live today. Short of all three, it stays unconfirmed and the compensation calculator never uses it.

Sources come only from legislation portals (legislation.gov.uk, EUR-Lex, Justice Laws Canada, the eCFR and Federal Register, the Irish Statute Book), the regulators' own sites (CAA, CTA, DOT, IAA), ICAO, the ADR bodies' own sites, the EU’s legislative procedure register and official airline-licence lists: national registers, EASA’s third-country operator list and the European Commission’s list of licensed EU carriers. Claim-company pages, law-firm blogs and press coverage can flag a change; none is ever the source cited under a figure. A fact that clears sourcing moves to Verified. One that could not be confirmed stays Unverified: it never appears as a figure or a firm rule, and where it matters the page names the point as open, as the calculator does for Scotland. A law adopted but not yet in force sits in Pending and appears only as a labelled upcoming change, never in a table or the calculator. Drafting is AI-assisted, and the editorial team checks every draft against these rules, set out in full in editorial policy.

Court decisions come only from two closed allow-lists: 34 CJEU rulings checked on EUR-Lex and 13 UK decisions checked on The National Archives' Find Case Law. On UK pages, CJEU rulings from before 31 December 2020 bind UK courts under section 6 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018; later ones are persuasive only. A County Court decision binds nobody and appears only as an example.

Found a number here that doesn’t match the source it cites? Use the corrections page to report it.

#How does the compensation calculator decide a result?

The calculator runs on 4 regimes, EU261, UK261, Canada’s APPR and US DOT, using only Verified rows, never a rounded estimate. Enter your flight details and it returns an amount in the regime’s own currency, or “not eligible”, each backed by its source line.

Source: EU261 art. 7(1)(a)-(c) — eur-lex.europa.eu; UK261 art. 7(1) as substituted by SI 2019/278 — legislation.gov.uk; APPR s.19(1)(a)-(b) — laws-lois.justice.gc.ca; 14 CFR 250.5(a)-(b) — ecfr.gov; checked 2026-09-15.

A UK261 delay of 3 hours or more on a 1,600 km route returns £350; the same delay on an equivalent EU261 route returns €400. Canada’s APPR needs one input the calculator can’t fill for you, carrier size, because this site holds no verified list of which Canadian carriers are large or small; a large carrier’s 9-hour-plus delay pays C$1,000, a small carrier’s C$500 for the identical wait. US DOT figures are denied-boarding caps, not delay compensation, up to $1,075 or $2,150 depending on how late the airline’s own replacement flight lands, because federal law sets no delay or cancellation compensation at all. A cancellation with 14 days' notice or more returns “not eligible” under EU261 and UK261 alike, whatever the distance. Where a carrier may cut the amount by half for a shorter re-routing delay, the calculator marks that as optional, matching the airline’s own choice under the regulation, and for Scotland it shows the 5-year prescription statute rather than computing a deadline, since no Scottish court has yet confirmed how it applies to UK261 claims.

Run your own flight through the compensation calculator instead of reading a table by eye.

#How is the airline payout-times dataset collected?

How long an airline actually takes to pay isn’t a Verified legal fact, it’s a passenger-reported pattern. Each carrier row needs a minimum of 3 separate posts with a resolved time for the same step before it publishes, and shows the sample size, the reporting period, the median wait and the range, never a single anecdote passed off as typical.

Reports come from public passenger posts on Reddit, FlyerTalk, MoneySavingExpert, boards.ie, the TripAdvisor forum and Trustpilot, dated and matched to a named carrier and regime rather than pulled in bulk from one thread. A carrier with fewer than 3 resolved posts for a step gets no row at all: an average built on one or two posts isn’t a pattern, it’s a guess with a number attached. Once a carrier clears that bar, its row on the airline payout-times dataset is labelled throughout as reported figures, never as a statutory deadline. Download any dataset this site publishes as CSV from the data hub.

#How is the airline ADR map checked?

The CAA lists 2 approved alternative-dispute-resolution providers for UK261 complaints, AviationADR and CEDR. Each carrier on the ADR map is checked against three public lists, the CAA’s own ADR list, AviationADR’s airline members page and CEDR’s subscriber page, and a carrier absent from all three is recorded as absent, not left blank.

Source: CAA ADR page, AviationADR airline and airport members page and CEDR aviation page — caa.co.uk, aviationadr.org.uk, cedr-assist.com; checked 2026-09-15.

A positive match looks like this: easyJet, Ryanair, TUI Airways, Virgin Atlantic and Wizz Air appear on the CAA’s list under AviationADR, and British Airways appears under CEDR. Jet2 and Loganair are the opposite case, and that absence is a checked, dated finding, not a blank cell: neither airline appears on the CAA list, the AviationADR members page or the CEDR subscriber page, so a passenger with either carrier can turn to the CAA’s Passenger Advice and Complaints Team (PACT), which cannot make a binding decision, or go to court. The carrier-by-carrier table is rechecked against the CAA list before every update: find your airline’s row on the airline ADR map before you choose a route.

#How do we compare claim companies?

A claim-company comparison only earns a place on this site once it can be checked the same way a legal fact can. Since 22 September 2026 it has one, claim companies compared, with each fee read on the company’s own published terms and dated.

The comparison runs on process: five companies in alphabetical order, with the same criteria applied to every one. Each fee is quoted from the company’s own fee page and carries the date it was read there, exactly as a legal figure does, VAT included or excluded as the company itself states it. A company with no published fee terms gets no row rather than an estimate. Withdrawal terms, whether an airline pays the company directly, refusal rates and payout speed stay off that page, because none of them could be checked against a primary source. Put those questions to any claim company in writing before you sign.

#What triggers a re-check of a published page?

5 named triggers force a re-check of every affected page: publication of the EU261 revision in the Official Journal, an APPR amendment or the commencement of Canada’s 2023 amending Act, the DOT’s two-yearly denied-boarding compensation review, a CAA ADR-list update, and an ICAO revision of the Montreal Convention limits (About).

Source: EU261 procedure file 2013/0072(COD) — oeil.europarl.europa.eu; joint text PE-CONS 39/26, art. 3 — data.consilium.europa.eu; SOR/2019-150 and 2023, c. 26, s. 465 — laws-lois.justice.gc.ca; 14 CFR 250.5(e) — ecfr.gov; CAA ADR page — caa.co.uk; ICAO 2024 revised Montreal limits, effective 28 December 2024 — icao.int; checked 2026-09-15.

The EU261 revision shows the Pending rule at work: adopted at third reading in July 2026 but still unpublished in the Official Journal, it is logged as an upcoming change and never feeds the calculator or a compensation table until it actually applies, a full 12 months after it enters into force. Once any of the five triggers fires, the affected pages are re-checked against the source directly, not against a summary of the source, and the checked-date line updates. A figure that changed is never silently swapped in, and where it is recorded depends on why it changed: the law moving is dated in the rule-change log, while a figure that was wrong when we published it goes to the corrections page. Read the checked date on a Source line before you rely on the figure above it.

This page explains how the site checks facts; it is not legal advice. For a specific claim, contact the regulator named on the relevant regime page or a qualified lawyer.

#Sources

#FAQ

How often do you re-check the law on your pages?
Every fact was checked on 15 September 2026, and 5 named triggers force a re-check of the affected pages: the EU261 revision is published in the Official Journal, an APPR amendment is made or comes into force, the DOT runs its two-yearly denied-boarding compensation review, the CAA updates its ADR list, or ICAO revises the Montreal limits.
Where does your calculator get its amounts?
Every amount comes from a Verified row in our fact base, sourced to the regulation itself: £220 to £520 for UK261, €250 to €600 for EU261, C$125 to C$1,000 for Canada's APPR depending on carrier size, and US DOT's $1,075 or $2,150 denied-boarding caps, since federal law sets no delay compensation at all.
How do you measure how long airlines take to pay?
We aggregate dated passenger reports from Reddit, FlyerTalk, MoneySavingExpert, boards.ie, the TripAdvisor forum and Trustpilot, and only publish a carrier row once at least 3 separate posts give a resolved time for the same step. Each row states the sample size, the period covered, the median days to payment and the range, labelled as reported figures, not a statutory deadline.
What happens when a rule changes?
5 named triggers force a re-check: OJ publication of the EU261 revision, an APPR amendment, the DOT's two-yearly review, a CAA ADR-list update, or an ICAO Montreal revision. Once one fires, the page is re-checked, the checked-date line updates, and any changed figure is logged on the corrections page.