An App That Masters Passenger Rights
A meeting with Jakub Ladra, founder of ClaimAir.
I have travelled a lot in recent years and was several times confronted with flight delays as well as with a loss of my baggage. For sure, I found it easy to handle such situations but I realized that it could be damn hard and annoying for anyone who has no clue about related regulations, laws and conventions. I found out that every year, 26 million passengers are entitled to compensations from the airlines, but only less than 1% get what they deserve. In August 2013, my idea of ClaimAir was born; a mobile app that helps air passengers to master their rights and collect flight compensations in case of flight delays, cancellations, denied boardings, and baggage related issues.
ClaimAir is an App that works as an automated guided tour that instantly evaluates and determines specific claims with respect to passengers’ situation, like delayed or cancelled flight, denied boarding or baggage related issues. You just simply input your flight data, answer several easy questions and the app tells you what you are exactly entitled to obtain. The app further gives you instructions how to get the compensations and in case that airlines unlawfully refuse your claims (yes, it happens quite often), it encourages you to create a 1-click formal complaint and send it to the airline. If ClaimAir customers prefer not to claim their rights on their own, we can also act on their behalf in pursuing their complaints for a successbased fee – however, it’s not our core business at the moment. The very first time I got in touch with air passengers’ rights was at the university. It had started as a short semestral project which subsequently turned to my bachelor thesis. Actually it was in 2007, several years before I installed my first mobile app. No surprises, the thesis ended up in a box – luckily, not forever. In 2009, I successfully graduated from the Czech Technical University in Prague with a master degree in Air Transport Operations, Economy and Management. All my life I assumed that having a six-year degree would get me through the door at any company and would guarantee me a good life. I quickly realized that if it had been 1990 instead of 2009, when the Great Recession began affecting every business all around the world, which might have been the case. I experienced a difficult stage of unemployment and underemployment and found out that if I wanted to succeed and be fully satisfied with my life, I had to begin my education all over again. I began reading everything I could on business and marketing, started learning how to coade and attended various startuprelated events. As time went on, I was more and more convinced that rather than asking others for a job interview and hoping for a success, I wanted to create my own business.
So I went through a phase of entrepreneurship, over a few attempts of building something extraordinary (guess how it worked) and last year I finally ended up with my most recent project called ClaimAir. In the beginning, I started ClaimAir on my own. I didn’t even know whether the idea was viable so I wanted to test my initial assumptions before hiring anyone else. Afterwards, I found a cofounder and advisor who was in many areas more experienced than me so we were able to make important decisions together and I still learn new things, which is awesome.
Our goal of ClaimAir is to develop a solution that allows people all over the world to complain easily on their own and get what they deserve, even if they don’t have any legal background. We are currently working on implementation of the U.S. rules so intrastate and interstate U.S. flights will be covered in terms of denied boarding and baggage related issues. Together with this task we are going to finalize the iOS version of the app with improved user interface both for iOS and Android version. Then we’ll be ready to enter the U.S. market. Our business development strategy is simply based on strong communication with our customers and utilizing their valued, we have a number of new ideas that may be implemented soon. ClaimAir will surprise passengers.
Jakub Ladra, founder of ClaimAir
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