EDITORIAL POLICY
How we work, and how we are funded
This page exists so you can judge the source rather than take our word for it. It covers what we publish, how we check it, how we correct it, and where our money comes from.
What we publish
Plain-language explanations of EU Regulation 261/2004 and the UK's equivalent air passenger rights rules, together with free browser-based tools that help a passenger work out what may apply and draft their own claim.
We publish information, not advice. We are not a law firm and no solicitor-client relationship is created by reading this site.
How we source what we write
Every factual claim about a rule, a threshold or a deadline is grounded in one of these, and we link to them:
- The regulation itself — Regulation (EC) 261/2004, on EUR-Lex.
- Official guidance — the European Commission's Your Europe portal, and the UK Civil Aviation Authority.
- Court judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union, where they interpret a provision.
- National enforcement practice, where member states differ.
Where sources genuinely conflict, or where a figure is open to interpretation, we say so on the page rather than picking the tidier answer.
Review and dating
Every guide shows a last reviewed date. That date changes when the substance of the page is checked against the sources, not when the page is cosmetically edited.
Passenger rights change through new judgments and enforcement practice. Pages that depend on a specific interpretation are checked more often than pages covering settled points.
Corrections
If we get something wrong, we fix it and we say so. We do not silently delete mistakes.
- Report a correction to [email protected], ideally with a source.
- Corrections affecting a figure, threshold or deadline are prioritised.
- Where a correction changes the substance of a page, the review date is updated.
How we are funded, and the rules we apply
This site is funded by affiliate referral fees. When a reader chooses to use a commercial claims service after reading our pages, we may receive a fee from that company. That is the whole of our commercial model. We do not sell data, we do not run advertising, and we do not sell email lists.
We hold ourselves to five rules:
- The free route is always published in full. Every page that mentions a paid service also explains how to claim directly from the airline at no cost. We do not withhold the free method to make the paid one more attractive.
- Paid links are labelled where you see them. Any affiliate link carries a visible "AD" marker and a one-line disclosure beside it — not buried on a separate page.
- A referral fee never reduces what you receive. Any fee comes from the partner's own margin. It does not come out of your compensation.
- Commercial interest never decides what we recommend. If we say a paid service may be worth considering, it is because it does something a direct claim does not — such as handling the correspondence on commission — and we say plainly when that trade is poor value.
- No invented numbers. We do not publish success rates, payout statistics or testimonials that we cannot substantiate.
What we do not do
- We do not submit claims, act as your representative, or correspond with airlines on your behalf.
- We do not buy or look up flight or booking data about you.
- We do not guarantee any outcome, amount or timeframe.
- We do not publish fake reviews, invented author biographies or false freshness dates.
Privacy by design
The rights checker and the claim letter builder run entirely in your browser. Your trip answers and the text of your letter are not transmitted to us. Analytics is the only third-party request, it is consent-gated, and it never receives your trip answers or letter text. See the privacy notice.
Who we are not
We are not an airline, a regulator, a national enforcement body, a law firm, or a claims management company. We are not affiliated with the European Commission or the UK Civil Aviation Authority. We are an independent publisher, and we say so plainly.
Who publishes this site
DelayPayouts is published and operated by Optimus, based in Tel Aviv, Israel. Full operator details, including a company profile, are published on the contact page.
Contact
Questions about this policy, or about anything we publish, go to the addresses on the contact page.