Flightright swallows Scandinavian competitor

With the acquisition of Flyhjælp, the Potsdam-based start-up wants to expand its Scandinavian business. The founders of the Copenhagen-based company remain on board.

German legal tech start-up Flightright is taking over Danish air passenger rights platform Flyhjælp. The company made the announcement on Wednesday. "We have a clear strategic direction and are using the Corona crisis to consolidate the market for air passenger rights," Jan-Frederik Arnold, CFO at Flightright, said of the acquisition. Nothing was initially disclosed about the purchase price.

Flightright and Flyhjælp follow a similar business model. Both companies help passengers to enforce claims against airlines, for example if they are responsible for delays or flight cancellations. The Potsdam-based start-up Flightright has thus become one of the most successful legal-tech start-ups in Germany over the past ten years.

With the takeover of the Copenhagen-based competitor, Flightright wants to gain a better insight into Scandinavian law on the one hand. On the other hand, the company hopes to achieve economies of scale, says CFO Arnold: "The more cases we bring together under one roof, the more we'll be able to enforce our customers' cases with the airlines based on the many data points and, if necessary, also win them in court."

Flyhjælp founders Gustav and Johan Tybo will continue to manage the Copenhagen location in the future. In the near future, Flightright even wants to expand the branch there.