Will standard travel insurance cover you if a flight is delayed or late and you miss a connecting flight?

You may think that eventualities such as missed connecting flights and flight delays are exactly the things that travel insurance is meant to cover. However, for most policies, there are only specified reasons that will be considered payable under the travel insurance policy.

The best thing you can do is to check the policy details of the travel insurance plan to check what things are covered, as well as what things will be refused payment, if you claim using these reasons. The reasons covered will differ from policy to policy, but check if these include:

• bad weather,
• civil riots,
• public disturbances or protests,
• mechanical breakdown of the airplane or ship,
• breakdown of the car you used on the way to the airport,
• and personal accident.

This kind of benefit is usually called trip cancellation or curtailment. It is also called missed or delayed departure. When you say delayed, it means that the flight has been late for 12 hours already. The airline is also held responsible for delays and missed connections if these events happen because of airline strikes or mechanical failure.

Trip cancellation or curtailment insurance will give payments for expenses incurred because of a missed of delayed flight. However, you should note that delayed flights and missed flights are not always provided in one policy.

When you are buying the cheapest and lowest level of cover, missed or delayed flights are usually not included in the protection. The most basic and standard ones usually just include Personal Accident and Medical Expenses. You need to have these added as an option, with, of course, an additional premium paid.

There are also some tricky aspects that you should look into. Remember, travel insurance is meant to cover events that are unforeseen. This means that civil unrests and hurricanes that are announced after you bought the policy and which subsequently cause flight delays will not be covered.

The travel insurance company also expects you to be responsible enough and be diligent in your effort to make it to the airport or pier on time. That means that you can't claim against a missed flight just because there was heavy traffic.

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