Data point:
A intra-europe flight was delayed and I was stuck overnight at my connection point. The initial delay was due to sick crew, and then further delayed by weather. The airline paid for hotel and meal and taxi to/from hotel because of EU261. Arrived at my destination about 14 hours late.
I bought a shirt (bags stayed with the airline overnight) and a paid for a taxi at my final destination, about $45 total. Claim approved for full amount.
Interesting points:
- The airline did offer to get me to an alternate airport about 200km from my original destination that same night (landing at like 1am) and offered to pay for bus/taxi to final destination, but I opted to wait overnight instead of taking that since I didn't want to arrive in a strange city at 3am. I also opted to wait for the second flight of the day so I didn't have to wake up at 5am and could get a full night's sleep. I was worried that since the airline did technically offer to get me to my destination with a delay of less than 6 hours, that would cause a problem with my claim. However, I'm not sure how they ever would have known that, so maybe I was being paranoid.
- I included a screenshot of my original itinerary, my revised itinerary, and the flightaware page showing the initial flight was delayed, but they wrote back and said they wanted a statement from the carrier. I wrote to airline and got a delay letter that didn't include the cause of the delay. That didn't work either, and I wrote back and got a delay letter that said weather and airport regulations -- that seemed to work.
- Timeline: delay was on Sept 10, filed claim Sep 13, they requested delay letter Sept 22 (7 business days), I submitted Sept 24, they requested delay letter with cause Oct 4 (7 working days), I submitted Oct 4, claim approved Oct 16 (8 working days). Looks like they're running at 7-8 days instead of their advertised 5 days; upthread someone said all the hurricanes caused a backlog, which is understandable.
I'm working on filing a claim with the carrier for EU261/2004 compensation because the delay was initially caused by a crew issue, not weather. We'll see!