Case study: how we digitized airline compensation claims (Reclama Travel)

Every cancelled or delayed flight hides a right almost nobody claims. EU Regulation 261/2004 forces airlines to compensate passengers with between 250 and 600 euros for long delays, cancellations or overbooking. Yet only 26% of Spanish passengers know when and how to claim. The rest leave the money on the table.

That gap is where Reclama Travel was born. And that is where we came in. This is the real story of how we digitized airline compensation claims and turned them into a turnkey service that is fast and cheap to run.

The challenge: a manual process that doesn't scale

Claiming flight compensation sounds simple. It isn't. Every case requires checking the route, calculating the distance, confirming the cause of the delay, ruling out extraordinary circumstances, drafting the claim, chasing the airline and, if needed, taking the matter to court.

Multiply that by thousands of files. The bottleneck is obvious. A human team handling each step by hand hits a ceiling: every new case adds hours of administrative work. The cost per claim rises and the margin collapses. For an agency that wants to offer this service to its clients, building that entire operation from scratch is unfeasible.

The problem wasn't legal. It was operational. We needed a machine that could process volume without multiplying headcount.

The solution: document management and AI, end to end

We designed Reclama Travel around three pieces: automating document management, processing each case with artificial intelligence, and automatically sending out-of-court claims to the airlines. The passenger doesn't lift a finger. And when a file ends up in court, the legal team takes over with the whole case already prepared.

The key is automating the repetitive tasks and reserving human judgement only for where it adds value.

AI case processing

The passenger enters the flight details. The AI processes the information, cross-checks it against route and disruption databases, calculates the distance, determines the amount owed under Regulation 261/2004 and estimates viability. Within seconds we know whether the case is worth pursuing. That first screening used to take hours.

Automated document management

This is the heart of the system. The formal claim, the letters to the airline and the documentation for each file are produced automatically from smart templates. The AI tailors each document to the specific case: route, cause, amount and applicable rules. All the paperwork is organized, classified and traced with no manual intervention. The drafting and filing work, once the bulk of the effort, becomes a matter of minutes.

Automated out-of-court claim sending

The platform doesn't just prepare the claim: it sends it. The system automatically dispatches out-of-court claims to the airlines, tracks response deadlines and follows up on every file. What once required a person to draft, send and chase case by case now happens on its own. A team reviews and focuses on the files that need judgement or that escalate to court.

The results

What was a craft process is now an industrialized operation. The main effect was a huge increase in operational capacity: with the same structure, the company began handling a claim volume that was previously unthinkable. These are the concrete effects of the model:

Throughput multiplies. By automating document management and the sending of out-of-court claims, the bottleneck disappears. The platform processes far more claims without adding headcount at the same rate. Growing stopped depending on hiring.

The cost per claim drops sharply, because the administrative work once done by a person is now executed by the system. That frees the team to focus on the complex cases and the ones that end up in court.

Timelines shrink. In out-of-court settlements, the passenger can be paid in under eight weeks. Speed builds trust, and trust brings more cases.

Above all, the service becomes replicable. Any travel agency can offer compensation management to its clients on top of the platform, without building its own legal department. The product goes from a bespoke project to a turnkey service.

Why this matters now

The framework is shifting. In 2025 the Council of the European Union adopted a position to reform Regulation 261/2004 that would raise the delay thresholds needed to claim: from three to four hours on flights up to 3,500 km, and up to six hours on longer routes. According to AirHelp estimates, that would leave 60% more passengers without any right to compensation.

In January 2026 the European Parliament set a different position, in favour of keeping the three-hour threshold and updating the amounts. The negotiation is still open. Meanwhile, millions of passengers entitled to compensation never claim it, simply because they don't know they can.

That mismatch between the right and its exercise is exactly the space a well-automated service fills. Technology doesn't change the law. It turns a complicated right into a procedure anyone can start in a minute.

How to start: the model applied to your business

What's interesting about this case isn't just Reclama Travel. It's the pattern. The same approach works for almost any high-volume management process with clear rules: claims, insurance losses, case files, filings.

If you want to apply this model, the path is straightforward:

Start with the bottleneck, not the technology. Identify the repetitive task that eats the most hours and caps your growth. At Reclama Travel it was document management and sending the claims.

Automate capture and the initial decision. Most of the savings come from screening, well and fast, which cases are worth pursuing.

Use AI to produce documentation, not to decide what's critical. The machine drafts and proposes; the person reviews and signs. You gain speed without losing rigour.

Measure cost per case from day one. It's the number that proves the ROI and justifies every new piece of automation.

At Obsidy we build technology-driven businesses like this one: fast, cheap and with measurable results. We don't sell technology for its own sake. We build the operation that makes a service profitable and scalable from month one.

Do you have a process drowning in manual tasks? Let's talk. Write to us at hola@obsidy.com or visit obsidy.com and we'll show you how to turn it into a product that scales.