With thousands of flight delays from this week’s winter storm, impacted travelers may only be entitled to getting rebooked, according to the head of one travel insurance company.
There were over 11,000 flight delays and cancellations across the U.S. and many in the D.C. region on Monday in response to the winter storm, The Associated Press reported. But travelers impacted may only be entitled to getting rebooked, according to the CEO of a Rhode Island-based travel insurance company.
When cancellations are related to the weather, customers can be rebooked, but “timing doesn’t really matter. It’s sort of what works for the airline, unfortunately,” said Suzanne Morrow, CEO of InsureMyTrip.
Generally, airlines won’t pay for lodging or meals, but each airline has their own standards of what they’ll do, Morrow said. Travel insurance, though, would step in if a traveler has it.
Before leaving the airport, Morrow said, if a flight has been canceled and there’s no chance of departing that same day, “I make sure that I’m rebooked all the way through. Sometimes, airlines will want to do it part way and then you have to go on standby. That’s my biggest recommendation, is just make sure that you’ve got everything scheduled to get home.”
If weather is disrupting flight schedules, airlines will make their own decisions on whether to waive change fees.
“I personally haven’t seen where, if there’s a storm of this magnitude, that airlines are then trying to charge people to change their flights. But just to be 100% certain, I would definitely ask,” Morrow said.
If flyers purchased travel insurance and are facing a delay or cancellation, “I would save all my receipts and find out what their policy does cover. … We always tell people to buy travel insurance as soon as you put down your first dollar, because what you don’t want to do is try to buy insurance once a storm is known,” Morrow said.
“There’s a lot of confusion, because of all the stuff that came out where (former President Joe) Biden was trying to get the airlines to pay for certain things. That never went through,” Morrow said. “So if people are really concerned about what airlines may or may not have to do for them in these situations, each airline is different.”
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