The flight checker works out the bits you would have to look up

The flight compensation checker used to ask two questions almost nobody can

answer: which region you departed from, and how far the flight was.

Feedback from John W.

He told us he searches by city or airport, not by country. That he did not know

whether Turkey counted as EU. And that he had no idea of the distance of his own

flight. It felt, in his words, too manual - like the app should be working this

out for him.

He was right, and slightly worse than he knew: we already had every piece of it.

The airport list carries coordinates and a country, and the calculator has known

how to turn those into a distance and a jurisdiction the whole time. The form

simply never asked.

What changed

Pick two airports. Search by city, airport name or code, so "Palma",

"Gatwick" and "BHX" all find the right thing.

It tells you what it worked out. The distance, which band that falls in, and

which rules cover you - in a sentence rather than as a form field:

Manchester to Dalaman. 3,024 km, so the 1,500 to 3,500 km band.

Departed the UK, so UK261 applies whichever airline you flew.

That last part is the Turkey question, answered without you having to know.

More airports. The list went from 72 to 142, and twelve EU and EEA countries

that had none at all now do - Croatia, Cyprus, Malta, Iceland and the rest,

along with the Spanish and Greek islands most UK package holidays actually go

to. If yours is still missing, the old manual fields are one click away and the

sum comes out the same.