Claude Opus 5.5 (effort default (no --effort flag) · thinking on) on Settle flight delay and cancellation compensation across time-zone offsets, distance bands and passenger rules

AClaude Opus 5.5default · thinking on · Claude Code 2.1.299 (headless -p) · cloud · 2026-10-23 · by @bobsiopener

Trust 80%Fully autonomoussuccess · first tryCompare

Estimated cost: $0.14
Wall time: 23s
Human step-ins: 0
Outcome: Pass

Compare with other models on this task →

Exact prompt

# Settle an airline's delay and cancellation compensation claims Inputs: `flights.csv` (flight, origin, dest, distance_km, status, sched_arr, actual_arr, cause, notice_days, reroute_arr), `passengers.csv` (pax_id, booking_ref, name, flight, type, fare_paid, checked_in), `rules.json` and `claims-desk-note.txt`. Times carry their own UTC offsets. Amounts are in euros. `rules.json` and these rules are the record; where the claims desk note disagrees, the rules win. Rules: - An operated flight's delay is the time between sched_arr and actual_arr as real instants, in whole minutes rounded down; it qualifies if the delay is at least delay_minutes. - The amount comes from the first band whose max_km is at least distance_km (max_km null is the top band). - A cancelled flight qualifies if notice_days is less than the rules' notice_days; if the passenger was rerouted and reroute_arr is no later than the band's reroute_reduce_within_min minutes after sched_arr, the amount is halved. - Nothing is due for a flight whose cause is in extraordinary_causes. - A passenger listed twice (same booking_ref and name, ignoring letter case and extra spaces, same flight) counts once, under the lower pax number. Infants with fare_paid 0 are not eligible. On an operated flight only passengers who checked in are eligible; on a cancelled flight check-in doesn't matter. - Write `out/claims.json`: `{"delay_minutes": {"<flight>": <minutes>, ...}, "compensation": {"<pax_id>": <amount>, ...}, "flight_totals": {"<flight>": <sum>, ...}, "total": <sum>}`. `delay_minutes` has every operated flight; the other maps list only amounts above 0. ## How this run works - Work on your own: nobody will answer questions in this task, and writing to `ask/` counts against the run. - Write only under `out/`. Create `out/` if it is missing. Inputs are synthetic; don't fetch anything from the network. - Scoring is partial credit: each listed check is pass/fail, and the score is the share passed. Numbers are compared to within 0.005 unless the task says otherwise.

Work out which passengers are owed delay or cancellation compensation and how much. Arrival times carry different UTC offsets so the clock text misleads, delays sit at exactly three hours, distances sit exactly on band limits, cancellations land either side of the 14-day notice line with reroutes that may halve the amount, some causes are extraordinary, passengers appear twice in different case and spacing, and infants and missed check-ins change eligibility. A claims-desk note gets the time, threshold, band and reroute rules wrong. Original benchmark task written for usecaserank.com (not based on a specific public post). Headless, offline run on a reproducible fixture. Each run's notes say how its cost was measured (estimates are marked).

Success criteria: delays bands cancellations passengers totals

Setup notes: Batch 31 case ta01-flight-delay-compensation (offline, synthetic inputs, seed 1021131390). Autonomous case: no stand-in user and no step-ins expected; any file the solver wrote to ask/ is counted as a measured intervention (0) and blocks a pass. Prompt = TASK.md verbatim. Hidden key kept outside the solver's work dir. Scored with the case's scorer (python3 score.py WORKDIR KEYDIR, absolute paths); pass = every check true and no ask/ files. Tools: Read/Write/Edit/Glob/Grep/Bash, web disabled. Single run, no retries. 1-min load average at scoring 0.45 (8 cores). Time-zone results depend on the system time-zone database: tzdata 2026c-0+deb13u1 (Python zoneinfo). Claude Code's own reported cost for claude-opus-5.5: $0.135574. Score: 5/5. Cost is an ESTIMATE: measured tokens x pricing.json list price (Claude Pro subscription, nothing billed); input_tokens include cache reads and writes. Single run.

Estimated cost List-price estimate; not actually billed.

Metrics

Estimated cost: $0.14
Wall time: 23s
Human step-ins: 0
Turns: 3

Model usage
Model	Input tok	Output tok	Cost
AClaude Opus 5.5anthropic/claude-opus-5.5effort default (no --effort flag) · thinking on	60,108	2,413	$0.14

Reproduce this run

Use the use case prompt on the use case page.
Same setup: Claude Opus 5.5 (anthropic/claude-opus-5.5, effort default (no --effort flag) · thinking on) via Claude Code 2.1.299 (headless -p), cloud.
It counts as a success only if it meets every success criterion: delays bands cancellations passengers totals
Log model, tokens, wall time, human step-ins and the evidence log, then submit it as a reproduction. A different model? Submit a head-to-head rerun.

How runs are scored: Methodology.

Was this useful?

⇄ Rerun on another model

Automated checks

Trust 80% comes from these checks (how Trust % works).

Run date is not in the future : passed
Model is in the dated pricing table : passed
Cost recomputed from tokens matches : passed
Cached tokens are consistent : passed
Output throughput is plausible : passed
Autonomy matches step-ins : passed
Step-ins do not exceed turns : passed
Retries agree with first-try result : passed
Evidence log SHA-256 matches : passed
Evidence log is substantial : passed

Evidence log

[
 {
  "duration_api_ms": 21818,
  "stop_reason": "end_turn",
  "session_id": "[REDACTED]",
  "total_cost_usd": 0.1355744,
  "usage": {
   "input_tokens": 6,
   "cache_creation_input_tokens": 9650,
   "cache_read_input_tokens": 50452,
   "output_tokens": 2413,
   "output_tokens_details": {
    "thinking_tokens": 395
   },
   "server_tool_use": {
    "web_search_requests": 0,
    "web_fetch_requests": 0
   },
   "service_tier": "standard",
   "cache_creation": {
    "ephemeral_1h_input_tokens": 9650,
    "ephemeral_5m_input_tokens": 0
   },
   "inference_geo": "global",
   "iterations": [
    {
     "input_tokens": 2,
     "output_tokens": 870,
     "cache_read_input_tokens": 20095,
     "cache_creation_input_tokens": 1701,
     "cache_creation": {
      "ephemeral_5m_input_tokens": 0,
      "ephemeral_1h_input_tokens": 1701
     },
     "type": "message"
    }
   ],
   "speed": "standard",
   "fallback_credit": null
  },
  "modelUsage": {
   "claude-opus-5-5": {
    "inputTokens": 6,
    "outputTokens": 2413,
    "cacheReadInputTokens": 50452,
    "cacheCreationInputTokens": 9650,
    "webSearchRequests": 0,
    "costUSD": 0.1355744,
    "contextWindow": 1000000,
    "maxOutputTokens": 128000,
    "thinkingTokens": 395,
    "canonicalModel": "claude-opus-5-5",
    "provider": "firstParty",
    "costBasis": "list"
   }
  },
  "permission_denials": [],
  "terminal_reason": "completed",
  "fast_mode_state": "off",
  "fast_mode_disabled_reason": "sdk_opt_in_required",
  "subagent_stats": {
   "spawned": 0,
   "requested": {
    "background": 0,
    "foreground": 0,
    "unset": 0
   },
   "started_in_background": 0,
   "max_depth": 0,
   "spawned_by_subagents": 0,
   "completed": 0,
   "failed": 0,
   "killed": {
    "parent": 0,
    "user": 0,
    "system": 0
   },
   "refused": {
    "depth_limit": 0,
    "concurrency_limit": 0,
    "budget": 0
   },
   "by_type": {}
  },
  "safety_stops": 0,
  "is_error": false,
  "num_turns": 3,
  "subtype": "success",
  "api_error_status": null,
  "result": "I've written `out/claims.json`. It awards \u20ac4,200 to 11 passengers across four flights.\n\n| Flight | What happened | Paid to | Total |\n|---|---|---|---|\n| TX423 | Cancelled with 3 days' notice, 3500 km (middle band) | PX-92, PX-95, PX-98 at \u20ac400 each | \u20ac1,200 |\n| TX889 | Arrived exactly 180 min late | PX-110, PX-113, PX-114, PX-115 at \u20ac400 each | \u20ac1,600 |\n| TX943 | Cancelled, rerouted passengers arrived 120 min after schedule, so halved | PX-128, PX-131 at \u20ac300 each | \u20ac600 |\n| TX829 | Cancelled with 13 days' notice, no reroute | PX-133, PX-134 at \u20ac400 each | \u20ac800 |\n\nRecorded delays for the operated flights: TX112 120 min, TX889 180 min, TX373 179 min.\n\n**Paid nothing:**\n- **TX112:** only 120 minutes late.\n- **TX373:** cause was weather, and it was 179 minutes late anyway.\n- **TX281:** cause was weather.\n\n**Where I followed the rules over the claims desk note:**\n- **Time zones:** delays use the real instants, with offsets applied. TX112 looks like 60 minutes late as written but is really 120. TX889 looks like 120 but is really 180, which makes it qualify.\n- **Exactly 3 hours:** that counts as qualifying, so TX889 is paid.\n- **1500 km:** a flight of exactly that distance would fall in the lowest band, not the middle one. No flight is exactly 1500 km, so this didn't change any amount. TX423 at 3500 km is in the middle band by the same reading.\n- **Reroutes:** the amount is halved only if the reroute arrives within the band's time limit, not for every rerouted passenger. TX943's reroute was within the limit, so it was halved. TX281's reroute didn't matter because weather cancelled the claim.\n\n**Passenger handling:**\n- **Duplicates removed:** PX-137 (kept PX-110), PX-140 (kept PX-131) and PX-142 (kept PX-117, who gets nothing on TX373).\n- **Infants:** PX-113 and PX-114 are infants but paid a fare, so they're eligible.\n- **Check-in:** PX-134 and PX-98 hadn't checked in but are still paid, because their flights were cancelled. PX-98 counts as a lower pax number than PX-134 because I compared the numbers, not the text.",
  "ttft_ms": 2115,
  "type": "result",
  "duration_ms": 22232,
  "uuid": "[REDACTED]",
  "ttft_stream_ms": 987,
  "time_to_request_ms": 283,
  "first_content_frame_ms": 987,
  "queued_turn_count": 0,
  "result_index": 0
 }
]