Jump to content

Cancelled Flight and Travel Insurance


Darcy03231
 Share

Recommended Posts

I'm posting this so that others might be able to learn something from my experience. I'm not mad, complaining or venting. Everyone involved in the mess was very nice and helpful. I'm just passing my experience along as a PSA.

 

I booked a family cruise for 10 people and bought travel insurance for all of us. We always fly in the day before a cruise. Since the cruise was leaving on Saturday, we all were flying in on Friday. 2 people were flying out of Atlanta (daughter & husband), 6 from Manchester, NH (my husband, niece, son & fiancé, daughter & boyfriend), and 2 (son & I) out of Boston, MA. My son had to work that day he and I were taking a late flight, while the others were all taking early flights.

 

The 2 from Atlanta made it without any issues. The 6 flying out of Manchester weren't so lucky. The flight was canceled due to weather. Lots and lots of flights were being cancelled due to weather. Southwest was able to rebook 4 of them (husband, niece, daughter & boyfriend) on a later flight that day, but was unable to book the other 2 until a flight on Sunday, which wasn't going to work. I rebooked them on an American flight out of Boston leaving in the early evening.

 

Ultimately, the American flight was cancelled and they were rebooked on another American flight. That flight was also cancelled and American then said they couldn't get them out until Monday. I was able to get them on my JetBlue flight, which ended up leaving about 2 hours late. Ultimately we all made the cruise.

 

I thought that since I had travel insurance it would cover the difference in the cost of the new flights. It did. Because the JetBlue flight went out about nine hours after the Southwest flight should have gone the Travel Delay portion of the policy kicked in (needed a minimum of a 6 hour delay). However, it had a cap of $150/pp and $600 total.

 

The original Southwest flights cost $165/pp. The JetBlue flight was $651/pp. I was refunded from Southwest and will receive $300 from the travel insurance, so my out of pocket will be a bit less than $700. I did check with the CC I booked the trip with an I also had insurance with them, but for the trip delay to kick in the delay needed to be for 12 hours.

 

My advise to everyone is just to really know what you're buying. I didn't buy the least expensive policy (or the most expensive either). In looking at other polices it seems that a lot have caps on trip delay similar to the one I bought.

 

In the big scheme of things everything worked out. We all made it to the cruise and had a great time. We certainly wouldn't have had fun if 2 had gotten left behind.

 

On another note, also make sure you have a CC (or more than one) with healthy limits. I managed to spend close to $2000 in less than 10 hours on flights. $660 for the American flights that were cancelled and $1350 on JetBlue. The American flights were refunded, but not until about a week after we got back.

 

We also were rerouted from Western to Eastern Caribbean due to Hurricane Harvey, so all of our pre-booked independent excursions were out the window. This meant booking new excursions for the new ports, which we ended up doing through the ship, so our onboard account was much higher than it normally would have been, resulting in higher CC charges.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You were paid under "trip delay" coverage. I believe that if you didn't make it to the cruise in time then the insurance would have paid for the flights you need to catch up to the cruise under the "trip interruption" coverage, up to a specified limit which is usually higher than the trip delay coverage. But different policies have different allowable reasons for trip interruption coverage and canceled flights might or might not be a covered reason.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for sharing your experience. It is very tempting sometimes to make the assumption that purchasing insurance actually ensures that you won't have to pay anything for anything that goes wrong. However as your experience shows limits and limitations do still apply and there is still a great need to be able to pay for a lot of things front many of which perhaps you'll be reimbursed for in part, but you still need the money up front.

 

This post may have been entered by voice recognition. Please excuse any typographical errors.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
 Share

  • Forum Jump
    • Categories
      • Welcome to Cruise Critic
      • New Cruisers
      • Cruise Lines “A – O”
      • Cruise Lines “P – Z”
      • River Cruising
      • ROLL CALLS
      • Digital Photography & Cruise Technology
      • Special Interest Cruising
      • Cruise Discussion Topics
      • UK Cruising
      • Australia & New Zealand Cruisers
      • Canadian Cruisers
      • North American Homeports
      • Ports of Call
      • Cruise Conversations
×
×
  • Create New...