AirHelp raises $12 million to deal with airline customer service for you

Few things are more dreadful than dealing with airline customer service. Fortunately, there’s a startup that wants to make those calls for you.

For hassle-free travel, AirHelp is raising $12 million in Series A funding from a group of investors, including Khosla Ventures and Evan Williams. 

AirHelp promises to get you money from airlines when you deserve it. And they’ve helped 900,000 customers so far — sometimes even filing lawsuits on their behalf.

AirHelp wants to “take all that hassle and paperwork away from people,” co-founder and CEO Henrik Zillmer tells TechCrunch. We “saw an opportunity in automating the process so we could handle thousands of claims and not necessarily have to do it manually.”

This is particularly useful in Europe, where customers are legally entitled to refunds for significant delays. (In the U.S., you must pay for travel insurance.)

Data from Zirra states that the total addressable market for flight delay compensation in Europe is €6 billion. AirHelp hopes to capture a significant portion of that.

AirHelp can also help American customers, too. When flights are overbooked, AirHelp can get customers the up to $1,300 to which they are entitled.

But don’t expect to get all your money back. AirHelp takes a 25 percent cut for its efforts. There is also a $20 annual membership for which AirHelp monitors all your flights and seeks delay claims automatically.

The company has 230 employees and is headquartered in New York.