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AirHelp airhelp.com

Can AI replace AirHelp?

A useful personal organizer is buildable, but AirHelp is more than the visible intake form. A local app can assess EC261 and UK261 eligibility, organize evidence, draft letters, and track deadlines. It cannot responsibly reproduce AirHelp's managed airline correspondence, cross-jurisdictional legal judgment, funded court action, and professional accountability in one sitting. This is a credible personal substitute for straightforward self-service claims, not a full replacement.

Verdict: Half-bot · AI gets you partway; the hard part stays hardBuild time: weekend to multi-day
Half-bot

01What it costs

Price variesNo Win, No Fee, percentage of recovered flight compensation

Checked Aug 14, 2026 · source: airhelp.com.

PlanMonthlyBilled yearlyWhat you get
No Win, No Fee——$0 upfront; AirHelp keeps 35% of successfully recovered flight compensation
AirHelp+ Single Trip Protection——1 trip, including outbound, return, and any connecting flights
AirHelp+ Lite—$2.88/mo1 year of membership; the official fee list does not publish a numeric trip allowance
AirHelp+ Smart / Protect 3 trips—$3.84/mo3 registered trips/year; €100 disruption payout, €200 missed-connection payout, and €100 baggage payout
AirHelp+ Pro / Protect 9 trips—$9.61/mo9 registered trips/year; €100 disruption payout, €200 missed-connection payout, and €100 baggage payout
AirHelp+ USA Comfort—$15/mo6 registered trips/year; $200 fast disruption payout plus eligible compensation claims
AirHelp+ USA Pro—$20.83/mo9 registered trips/year; $200 fast disruption payout plus eligible compensation claims

Hidden costs: Successful claims lose 35%; legal action adds another 15% (up to 50% total, used in about 3% of cases). Goodwill claims cost $29.99 unless recovery is below $30 or 3,000 loyalty points. Membership benefits may require registration at least 48 hours before departure; bank/FX fees can reduce payouts.

02Could AI build it for you?

The core job: Assess EC261 and UK261 eligibility, organize journey facts and evidence, estimate compensation, generate draft letters, and track submission and escalation deadlines locally.

What a working version needs:

  • Node.js 22
  • modern browser
  • SQLite
  • user-entered flight, passenger, and evidence data
  • current official passenger-rights sources

ClaimSolo is working proof of a personal self-service organizer, not a verified one-prompt reproduction of the managed claims service.

03What you'd give up

  • AirHelp staff handling airline correspondence and negotiation
  • case-specific legal judgment across jurisdictions
  • lawyer access and funded legal action under a no-win, no-fee model
  • commercial flight, weather, and disruption data used to validate claims
  • professional support and accountability when a claim becomes contested

People pay AirHelp to transfer the work, uncertainty, follow-up, and legal escalation to a specialist on a no-win, no-fee basis. A local tool can organize a straightforward self-service claim, but it does not negotiate with the airline, fund litigation, or take professional responsibility for a contested case.

05The build prompt

Paste this into an AI coding tool (such as Claude, ChatGPT, Lovable or Replit) to build your own version.

prompt.txt
Build me a local flight-compensation claim organizer to replace AirHelp for self-service claims. Requirements:

- Node 22 + Express + better-sqlite3, server-rendered pages on localhost, no frontend
  framework; all data in one SQLite file plus a local uploads folder.
- Model passengers, bookings, multi-segment journeys, disruptions (delay, cancellation,
  denied boarding, missed connection), claims, evidence files, and deadlines.
- Deterministic EC261 and UK261 eligibility rules in one versioned rules module: given
  the journey facts, output eligible / not eligible / needs manual review, the
  compensation band (250/400/600 EUR distance tiers), and the article relied on.
  Show which facts triggered which rule branch.
- Compute great-circle distance from airport coordinates and timezone-safe arrival
  delay from user-entered flight details; no commercial flight-data API.
- Attach evidence (tickets, emails, receipts) as local files on a chronological
  claim timeline.
- Generate editable draft letters to the airline and the national enforcement body
  from templates; never send anything automatically.
- Track stages (preparing, submitted, escalated to authority or ADR, resolved) with
  due dates, exported as an ICS file for my calendar.
- Export a whole claim as JSON and Markdown so nothing is trapped in the app.
- Say plainly in the UI and README: decision support, not legal advice; verify
  current rules and limitation periods yourself.
- Out of scope: automatic submission, airline negotiation, lawyer engagement, court
  filing, accounts, sync. The staff, legal funding, and accountability are the part
  you cannot build.
- README: setup, where data lives, backup by copying the SQLite file and uploads.

06Open-source starting points

  • ClaimSolo: Open-source, local-first personal workspace for assessing, documenting, and tracking EC261 and UK261 flight claims.
Sponsor slot · openFeatured alternative to AirHelp. A labeled card for one relevant tool.
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App prices, verdicts, alternatives and build prompts are adapted from Can I Vibecode It? (MIT License, © 2026 Rob Hallam). Each price shows the date it was checked and its source. Prices change; confirm on the vendor's site before you decide.