BTN exclusive with Tomas Vaišvila is the Chief Executive Officer of Skycop

Tomas Vaišvila is the Chief Executive Officer of Skycop, a European legaltech company that helps airline passengers claim flight delay, cancellation, or overbooking compensation, BTN caught up with him to fiund out more on the role this company plays in today’s aviation sector.

1. Looking back at 2026 so far, what have been the most significant developments across the aviation industry?

With ongoing delivery delays from major manufacturers, airlines are being forced to keep their older fleets in the sky much longer than planned.

Simultaneously, airlines are battling extreme cost spikes, with geopolitical tensions causing jet fuel prices to surge. These costs are then passed onto passengers, with the price of fares becoming even more competitive this year.

Airlines are obsessively focused on restructuring to protect their profits, which often means running thinner schedules with zero backup and inevitable disruptions that leave passengers stranded. At the same time, knowledge of consumer rights is gradually growing; many travellers are fighting harder than ever for compensation they’re owed, especially due to paying premium fares.

2. What are the biggest challenges currently facing airlines and airports when it comes to delays, cancellations and operational disruption?
An escalating challenge remains jet fuel shortages and supply chain pinches, which are creating unpredictable refuelling bottlenecks.

Climate change has also become an operational headache, with extreme weather disruptions, such as escalating wildfires and severe heatwaves, forcing sudden airport ground stops and massive regional reroutings. Persistent strike action across the aviation industry also continues to affect major transport hubs, often with little advance warning for travellers. A strike or weather delay in one city creates a wave of cancellations that ripples worldwide for days.

3. From Skycop’s data, what trends are you seeing around disruption? Are there particular airports, routes, regions or airlines where passengers are experiencing significantly more problems?

Based on Skycop’s own data, we can see that Manchester Airport has the highest gross disruption rate of 2026 at 9.3%, which means it experienced the most delays over 1 hour and/or cancellations. Amsterdam Schipol came in at a close second with a gross disruption rate of 9.2%, followed by Milan and Paris. Strike action appears to be one of the key drivers in cancellations; for instance, the mid-April Lufthansa strike led to 8.5% of all departures from Germany being cancelled that month. The best performing airports this year are Istanbul at number one, followed by Oslo and Stockholm Arlanda.

In terms of seasonal triggers, January proved to be the worst month of the year as winter snowstorms drove widespread cancellations. While summer delays were high, with July’s gross disruption rate being the second highest after January, these led to a high volume of rolling schedule delays rather than outright cancellations. Winter and strike months generally lead to more cancellations while summer produces delays.

4. How well do passengers actually understand their rights when a flight is delayed, cancelled or overbooked?

While passenger awareness has certainly improved in recent years, a massive knowledge gap remains and airlines frequently capitalise on it. Airlines use a fairly consistent playbook to avoid paying, and most of it relies on passengers not pushing back.

Airlines often design complicated claim processes to force passengers to jump through endless hoops. This can take the form of confusing submission forms or shifting documentation requirements. It is a deliberate strategy to make the process so tedious that frustrated passengers simply give up.

Airlines carry the burden of proof; they must show the specific circumstance was genuinely extraordinary, unavoidable, and directly caused the disruption, not just assert it. The airline must also demonstrate it took all reasonable measures to avoid the disruption or, where avoidance wasn’t possible, to prevent it from cascading into further delays or cancellations (e.g. trying to source a replacement aircraft or crew). Understanding these nuances will protect passengers when disruption occurs.

5. Where do you think airlines and airports could be doing more to improve the passenger experience when disruption occurs?

Disruption itself is sometimes unavoidable, but the secondary stress caused by poor communication and terrible customer support is entirely preventable. Airlines need to demonstrate more transparency to passengers when communicating why the flight is delayed and explicitly inform passengers of their full legal entitlements on the spot.

We have also witnessed inconsistent decisions across the same flight. Airlines sometimes pay some passengers on a delayed or cancelled flight while denying others, even citing different reasons for the same event, which itself is often evidence the initial rejection wasn’t well-founded. More respect and care for paying customers would be a good place to start improvements.

6. How is technology, including AI and automation, changing the way disruption is managed and passengers are supported?

On the airline side, predictive AI is being deployed to forecast maintenance bottlenecks, optimise flight schedules in real time, and automatically rebook stranded travelers during mass cancellations.

On the passenger side, technology is levelling the playing field. At Skycop, our advanced data analytics and AI allow us to cross-reference global flight telemetry, historical radar data, weather reports, and air traffic control logs to quickly verify the exact cause of a delay. This eliminates the legal grey areas airlines historically relied on when falsely claiming ‘extraordinary circumstances.’ Automation is streamlining the legal claim process, taking what used to be a tedious administrative nightmare and turning it into a more seamless experience.

7. What changes to passenger-rights regulation are you expecting in 2027, and what could these mean for travellers and the aviation industry?

Last month, the European Council just gave its final clearance to a major overhaul of air passenger rights in EU261. These new EU laws finally clarify exactly what constitutes an “extraordinary circumstance,” removing the legal grey area airlines frequently use to deny claims. The new rules also strictly prohibit airlines from cancelling a return ticket just because a passenger missed the outbound flight (the ‘no-show’ rule) and there is greater transparency around baggage fees. These stronger legal frameworks will make it much harder for airlines to dodge their responsibilities moving forward.

8. How do you strike the right balance between protecting passenger rights and ensuring regulation remains workable for airlines?
The key lies in eliminating legal grey areas. Regulations must clearly distinguish between uncontrollable events like severe weather or air traffic control halts, and controllable operational choices, such as crew and fuel shortages, fleet maintenance, or overbooking.

Airlines should never face financial penalties for making genuine safety-first decisions to ground an aircraft. However, when disruption stems from internal breakdowns, compensation should be awarded promptly, encouraging carriers to build resilience into their schedules rather than running on razor-thin margins.

Travellers shouldn’t be forced to absorb the financial cost of operational failures.

9. What role should companies such as Skycop play in the relationship between passengers, airlines and regulators?

Skycop moves faster and more assertively than most passengers could alone: it first sends the airline a letter before action, giving a voluntary payment window of 8–15 days, and if the airline doesn’t pay, it promptly initiates court or administrative proceedings (the specific route depends on the jurisdiction).

Because we process millions of data points across thousands of routes, we also provide crucial insights into aviation industry trends. We help regulatory bodies identify systemic enforcement failures, spot emerging airline loopholes, and see where consumer protection laws need tightening in practice.

10. Looking ahead to 2027, what are the major aviation trends you believe the industry should be preparing for now?

Following the EU Council’s final clearance in mid-2026, the updated EU Air Passenger Rights framework will take full effect in mid-2027. Airlines have less than a year to adapt their systems for strict 30-day compensation payout deadlines and a standardised definition of ‘extraordinary circumstances.’ Airlines that rely on legal grey areas or slow claim processing will face severe penalties and reputational damage.

Summer heatwaves, severe turbulence and wildfire smoke are driving unprecedented weather delays, regional reroutings and airspace closures. As climate change reshapes travel patterns, with tourists swapping scorching mid-summer trips for cooler northern destinations, airlines must continue to adapt their seasonal schedules and fleet allocations.