I just received compensation for a canceled flight from two years ago. Check your old emails

I am sharing this because airlines owe a lot of people money, and they just sit on it, hoping you will forget.

I was organizing my inbox this weekend and found an itinerary from a trip back in 2023 that was a complete disaster. The flight was canceled, I had to sleep at the airport, and my plans were ruined. At the time, I was too exhausted to deal with their customer service hotline, so I just accepted the loss and forgot about it. It turns out there is no strict, immediate deadline for this. I read recently that you can still claim cash for heavily delayed or canceled flights from years ago. I think the limit goes back up to three years, depending on the region.

I definitely did not want to spend my Saturday arguing with an airline chatbot, so I just put the old booking reference into AirHelp to see what would happen. They take a notably high commission to handle the paperwork, which is a downside, but it is money I had completely written off years ago anyway. If you had a vacation ruined anytime recently, go search "canceled" or "delayed" in your email. It is worth checking, even if a third party takes a portion of it to do the actual work.