Improper rejections increase six points in a year: from 52% recorded in 2024 to 58% in 2025. 1 in 3 valid but rejected claims are directly ignored by airlines, which do not provide any response to the passenger. Weather conditions are the second most used justification, in 25% of cases, despite there being no evidence of bad weather on the route.
A new study by AirHelp, based on the claims managed by the passenger rights company during 2025, has revealed that airlines improperly rejected 58% of the compensation claims they should have addressed, six percentage points more than the previous year, when this figure stood at 52%.
The study also identifies what the main reasons used by airlines to reject these claims are. And the most frequent is not an extraordinary circumstance or an operational problem: in 31% of cases, the airline simply did not respond to the claim.
This means that almost a third of the improperly rejected claims, analyzed by AirHelp, were completely ignored, without the passenger receiving a response from the company. For affected travelers, the absence of a reply thus becomes an additional barrier to exercising the rights recognized by legislation.
Bad weather, the second most used excuse
The second most common reason was adverse weather conditions, mentioned in 25% of improper rejections. Airlines cited circumstances such as ice, storms, strong winds, or low visibility to justify flight interruptions.
However, according to the analysis of claims managed by AirHelp, in these cases there was no evidence that adverse situations occurred on the route that justified the interruption.
Extraordinary circumstances can exempt an airline from paying compensation in certain situations, but the company must be able to prove that such circumstances truly affected the flight in question. For passengers, verifying the truth of these explanations can be especially difficult.
The air traffic restrictions represent another 11 %
In 11 % of the cases, airlines attributed the delay or cancellation to air traffic control restrictions. However, there was also no evidence to demonstrate that such restrictions had actually caused the flight interruption.
Next, 10 % of the rejected claims received a negative response from the airline, but without the airline providing a specific reason for doing so. That is to say, the passenger receives a response, but still does not know what circumstance justifies the company not compensating them accordingly.
Among the other identified reasons are the recourse to the Company's Terms and Conditions (3 %), technical problems (3 %), operational problems at the airport (3 %), problems arising from a previous flight (2 %), and the claim that the delay was too short to generate a right to compensation (2 %).
In the case of technical problems, AirHelp points out that these do not generally constitute an extraordinary circumstance when they arise from inherent problems in the airline's operation or operational decisions that the company could have avoided.
Similarly, some airlines claim that an interruption occurred as a result of a problem that happened on a previous flight. However, in the analyzed cases, there was insufficient evidence of this relationship or the company had time and alternatives to recover operations before the problem affected the passenger's flight.
A problem that worsens
The results of 2025 show a particularly concerning evolution compared to the previous year. In 2024, AirHelp's analysis already revealed that 52 % of the claims that should have been addressed had been improperly rejected. A year later, the proportion reaches 58 %.
In addition to the increase of six percentage points, the weight of some of the most frequent justifications also changes. The absolute lack of response rises from 26 % to 31 %, while "unjustified" weather conditions increase from 21 % to 25 %.
For AirHelp, this data highlights that the main obstacle for passengers to exercise their rights is not only the lack of knowledge of the regulations but also the difficulties they encounter when trying to assert those rights against the airlines themselves.