A public ledger of stolen flight hours.
Airlines treat passenger time and money as background expenses. Row30 is a public record that makes those costs visible: every disruption documented by passengers, cross-referenced with FAA enforcement data, and surfaced where regulators, journalists, and the next flying public can see it.
We don’t replace the airline complaint desk or the DOT. We make ignoring those channels expensive — by aggregating individual incidents into a public, verifiable case file.
How it works
- Document
A passenger files a claim from their phone or laptop — flight, route, what happened, what it cost. Boarding pass and receipts are attached. Takes about five minutes.
- Verify
The boarding pass confirms the claimant was on the flight. The incident is matched against FAA Civil Penalty filings within a ±7-day window. When a match is found, the claim is upgraded to FAA-matched and other claimants on the same flight are notified.
- Resolve
The incident is published to the public ledger. Solidarity pools — funded by anyone who wants to back the case — distribute to verified claimants. Unresolved cases escalate to DOT complaints and class-action support.
FAA cross-referencing
The FAA publishes civil-penalty enforcement actions against unruly passengers — case number, date, fine amount, narrative. Row30 ingests that feed daily, parses passenger cases (not airline or mechanic enforcement), and tries to match each record against incidents already in our ledger.
Matching is two-pass: first by flight number and date (±7 days), then by airline + origin + destination + date. A match attaches the FAA case number and fine to the incident and flips its status to FAA-matched. That’s the strongest evidence a passenger claim has — independent federal confirmation that the disruption happened.
Solidarity pools
Every published incident opens a solidarity pool — a place where anyone can chip in toward making the affected passengers whole. Strangers fund strangers. Once a pool disburses, every contribution is split by a fixed rule:
- Affected passengers70%
Divided equally among verified claimants on this incident.
- Legal escalation fund20%
DOT complaints, class-action support, escalation fees.
- Departure Tax Award fund2%
The annual award — see below.
- Row30 platform fee8%
Operations and infrastructure. Premium members pay 6%.
The Departure Tax Award
Once a year, Row30 gives the Departure Tax Award to the passenger whose documented incident represents the largest cumulative theft of life hours by an airline that year. It is an unwelcome honor. The recipient receives the year’s accumulated award fund and an invitation to publish their full account on Row30.
Two percent of every solidarity-pool contribution flows here. Eligibility requires at least three documented incidents in the calendar year and is decided by community vote.
Had a flight stolen from you?
Filing a claim is the only way an incident lands on the ledger. Free, takes a few minutes, and gets cross-referenced with the FAA automatically.
File a claim