An airline has no fixed legal deadline to answer a claim today, so you set one yourself. The letter below repeats the claim in full, gives 14 days, and names exactly where the file goes if nothing comes back. Silence, dated and evidenced, is what a regulator needs from you.
[Your full name]
[Your address]
[Email]
[Phone]
[Today's date]
[Airline name] — Customer Relations / Claims
[Airline claims address or online claim form]
Re: Second request — no reply to my claim
Flight [Flight number]
Route [Departure airport] to [Final destination airport]
Date of flight [Flight date]
Booking reference [Booking reference]
Your reference [Reference number]
Dear Sir or Madam,
On [Date you asked for the refund] I sent you a claim about flight
[Flight number] from [Departure airport] to [Final destination airport]
on [Flight date], booking reference [Booking reference]. Since then I
have had [no reply at all / only an automated acknowledgement].
This letter repeats that claim and asks for a decision. My earlier
letter is attached in full, together with the booking confirmation and
the boarding passes.
I claim [Currency] [Amount].
Please reply within 14 days of the date of this letter, either by paying
that sum to [Payment details], or by stating in writing the specific
reason you consider nothing is due.
If I have no substantive reply within 14 days, I will treat the absence
of one as a refusal and refer the file to [the national enforcement body / the airline's ADR scheme], with a copy of this correspondence.
Yours faithfully,
[Signature]
[Your full name]
How to use it
- Fill “Date you asked for the refund” with the date of your first claim, and add any case reference the airline gave you.
- Attach the original letter and its attachments again. Do not make the reader hunt.
- Send it the same way you sent the first one, plus by post if you have a claims address, and keep proof.
- Put the reply date in your calendar. The letter is only useful if you act on the day it expires.
- On that day, file with the body you named. Find it in where to complain.
A chaser you do not follow through on teaches the airline to ignore you. Airlines close quiet files. The value of a dated deadline is entirely in what happens the morning after it passes, so pick a destination you are actually willing to use before you send this.
When silence becomes a refusal
There is no article of EU261 that turns silence into a decision, so you have to convert it yourself: a dated claim, a dated chaser, a stated deadline, and then a complaint that says “no substantive reply was received by this date”. That sequence is what a national enforcement body, an ADR scheme or a court reads as a refusal, and it is why the date on this letter matters more than its wording.
Two regime-specific points. In the UK, a CAA-approved ADR scheme accepts a complaint up to 12 months after the airline’s final response; where there has been no response at all, check the individual scheme’s rules on how long you must wait first. In the US, 14 CFR 260.9 requires carriers to notify passengers owed a refund of that right, and §260.10 requires the refund itself to be issued promptly — a carrier that has answered nothing is a complaint to the Department of Transportation, not a negotiation.
Where does the file go next?
To the national enforcement body for the country you departed from, or to the ADR scheme the airline belongs to, or to the DOT for a US flight. Escalate to the regulator explains which one applies and what a good complaint file contains; the directory has the links.
Should I send a final demand instead?
Only if you are prepared to issue a claim. A letter before claim is a step towards court and carries costs consequences if you never take it — see the final demand letter. For a first chaser, this letter is the right size.
Does chasing restart the time limit?
No. Writing to an airline does not stop a limitation clock anywhere. In England and Wales the period is six years and in Scotland five, and other countries differ widely — time limits by country sets out what we could verify and what we could not.