Missed departure, delay and abandonment

What we look at

• Did the customer leave enough time?

  If we think a customer left home too late and didn’t give themselves a reasonable amount of time to reach their international departure point, then we wouldn’t expect the claim to be covered by their travel insurance policy.

  For missed flight complaints, we’ll consider the airport’s recommendations for check-in. If the airport recommended the customer check in two hours before their flight time, then the customer should leave themselves enough time to get to the airport two hours before their flight.

  Most travel insurance policies don’t cover missed departures that happen because of long security checks at the airport.

• Connecting flights and policy exclusions

  Most travel insurance policies cover missed departure claims caused by ‘mechanical breakdown or failure of public transport’. The definition of public transport usually includes aircraft.

  Most policies cover their customers if their flight delay means they then miss a connecting flight.

  Some policies only cover the first leg of the outbound journey leaving the UK, or the first leg of the return journey.

  If you have an exclusion like this in your policy, it should be clearly highlighted in your policy documentation. If the exclusion isn’t clear, and we think it’s unfairly affected your customer, we might say you can’t rely on the exclusion when assessing the claim.

• Policies that don't have missed departure cover

  Missed departure cover is found in most travel policies – and it’s unusual for a policy not to include it. Some policies may have missed departure as an optional add-on. We’d expect you to make it clear to your customer if your policy doesn’t have this cover included.

  Most policies also cover missed departure on the outward and return flights. If you want to limit your cover to just the outward flight, you should clearly highlight this. If the exclusion isn’t clear, and we think it’s unfairly affected your customer, we might say you can’t rely on the exclusion when assessing the claim.

• Private taxis and public transport

  Some policies cover customers if they’re using public transport and there’s been a mechanical breakdown. But some insurers might not accept a private taxi as public transport.

  We’d look at what’s fair and reasonable. If we think your customer would have missed their flight regardless of whether they’d travelled by public transport or by private taxi/their own car, then we might think it’s fair and reasonable for you to pay the claim.

• Providing evidence

  We’d usually expect a customer to make a reasonable effort to get some sort of written confirmation to support their claim.

  If a customer hasn’t provided enough evidence, or evidence from the right source, we’d expect you to guide them where possible. While we know it’s for a consumer to prove they have a claim, they may not realise who is the right organisation to contact, for example Highways England. So in these situations we’d expect you to explain what further information you need and if you can, where they could find it, not just for the claim to be declined.

  For claims where the cancellation of an outbound flight means a connecting flight was missed, if a consumer can’t get evidence from the airline, we might accept news reports of cancelled and delayed flights as evidence in support of their claim.

• Cancelled flights

  You might say a claim isn’t covered because a flight was cancelled and not delayed. Our view is that the impact on the customer is the same whether the flight was delayed or cancelled.

  Airlines have their own responsibilities to passengers where a flight has been delayed or cancelled.

  Often an airline will arrange a replacement flight within 24 hours. We’ll look at what the airline offered and the reasons why your customer abandoned their trip if that’s what happened.

• Connecting flights

  Your customer’s policy may say that only the first leg of the outbound journey leaving the UK or the first leg of the return journey is covered. This means customers with multi-leg trips or connecting flights won’t be able to claim for problems with the other parts of their journey.

  If your policy has this restriction, it should have been highlighted to your customer. If you haven’t clearly highlighted this restriction, we might not think it’s fair for you to rely on the exclusion.

• Fixed benefit

  Travel delay is usually a fixed benefit – so you’ll pay out a fixed amount for each hour of delay over a certain period of time. Sometimes customers complain that their fixed benefit payment has been reduced because of compensation they’ve had from an airline.

  If an airline has paid a customer for their costs, or compensation under the cancelled flights directive we don’t think it’s fair for you to reduce any fixed benefit payment under their travel insurance policy.

• Your customer made alternative arrangements to travel

  We see complaints from customers who make their own arrangements to travel and are then told they’ve lost their fixed benefit. 

  We’d look at how long your customer would have waited if they hadn’t made their own way. Your customer may have reduced your financial exposure by taking action to prevent further costs in travelling sooner rather than later. So we’d usually think it’s fair that you pay them:

  • the travel delay amount they would’ve received if they’d waited the full time
  • their extra travel costs up to the value of what an abandonment claim would’ve been

• Your customer abandoned their trip before the set delay period has passed

  If your customer finds out there are no flights for a few days they might decide to abandon their trip and go home. We see complaints from customers who say they’ve had their abandonment claim turned because they didn’t experience a 24-hour delay.

  We’ll look at the circumstances of each case. If we’re satisfied that there was no other way for your customer to continue the holiday for at least 24 hours, then it makes no difference that the trip was abandoned early. We’ll think it’s fair to ask you to pay the claim.

• Lost time on holiday

  Sometimes a customer could have made an abandonment claim – but instead waited for the flight. By doing this, they’ve lost a day or more of their holiday.

  By choosing to go on a shorter trip, the customer has reduced your loss – if they’d not done this you would’ve been responsible for paying for the full cost of the abandoned holiday. 

  We might think it’s fair for you to consider covering any unused or additional costs up to the value of any abandonment claim.  For example, if the customer has lost a night in a hotel we might say you should cover that loss.

• Providing evidence

  We’d usually expect a customer to make a reasonable effort to get some sort of written confirmation from the airline to support their claim. If they can’t, we might accept news reports of cancelled and delayed flights as evidence in support of a customer’s claim.