Know which passengers you must write to first, and by when

The revised EC261 turns compensation from something a carrier answers into something it has to start. Within 96 hours of the end of a journey you must tell the passenger they may claim and how. A claim must be acknowledged immediately and answered within 30 calendar days — paid, or refused with a reason that names the circumstance you are relying on.

Deadlines here follow PE-CONS 39/1/26 REV 1, the text agreed in July 2026. It is not in the Official Journal yet, so the date it starts to apply is not known. Checked 19 September 2026. Read the agreed text.

What it does with your data

• Takes a CSV of disrupted journeys and works out, for each one, what is owed and which article decides it — 250, 400 or 600 euro, or nothing, with the rule written out in words.
• Puts the 96 hours on a clock from the end of the journey, not from the disruption, and shows it in the hour the departure airport keeps.
• Holds the claims register with the 30 days running, the complaints track with its own separate windows, and the evidence behind a refusal with a hash, so a swapped file is visible.

What it will not do

• It sends nothing on its own. Every letter is a draft until somebody at the carrier sends it.
• It does not decide whether a circumstance was extraordinary. It shows the list from the Annex and records which one you invoked, because the text requires you to say which.
• It keeps no passenger data it does not need: no dates of birth, no passport numbers, no seat numbers, no special service codes. The columns it refuses are listed back to you after each import.