Will your travel insurance pay if you miss a connecting flight?

Which policies pay if you miss a connecting flight?

Orient, Liva and the Mastercard World card. Orient and Liva cover a missed departure and a missed connection in one section.¹² Mastercard has a missed connection benefit under its own heading.³

A missed departure is different. It means failing to reach the departure point on time, and a missed connection means failing to make the next flight on your journey. AIG pays for a missed departure only, when you cannot reach the final international departure point on the outward or return trip because of a strike, industrial action or breakdown of public transport, or an accident or breakdown of your vehicle.⁴

Salama and Daman name no missed connection benefit.⁵⁶ GIG Gulf’s wording has no chapter or term for it.⁷ Allianz Partners has no heading for it. Its Travel Delay Coverage pays transport to rejoin a cruise or tour, or to reach your destination or return home after a local public transport delay on the way to the airport or station.⁸

None of the policies says whether two separate tickets count as a connection. Ask your insurer before you book separate tickets.

What has to cause the missed connection?

Each policy sets its own test.

• Mastercard pays if your previous flight was delayed or cancelled.³
• Orient pays if the public common carrier delayed you for a reason you could not foresee and that was not your fault.¹
• Liva pays if public transport was hit by a strike, industrial action, poor weather or mechanical breakdown, or the vehicle you were in had an accident or broke down. Its FAQ gives a delayed flight from the UAE to Heathrow as an example of a missed onward flight, subject to the terms.²

Orient adds conditions. Your ticket must be booked and paid at least 24 hours before the scheduled departure. Orient excludes a connection with less than 3 hours’ waiting time at the connecting airport, and any loss from your own late arrival at the connecting airport or port.¹ The wording does not say how that last exclusion applies when your inbound flight was late. Ask Orient.

Orient and Liva both exclude a loss where you turned down an alternative offered to you. Liva excludes trips within the UAE only.¹²

What proof do you need?

A letter from the airline, in most cases. Mastercard asks for the ticket and boarding pass, an airline letter certifying the missed connection, and proof the full fare was charged to the eligible card.³ Orient asks for written confirmation of the reason from the carrier, with receipts, and excludes a loss without it.¹ AIG asks for written confirmation from the appropriate authority for its missed departure benefit.⁴

Ask the airline for a letter giving the reason before you leave the airport.

What does the airline owe you?

The airline has its own duties, separate from your insurance. Etihad’s conditions name a missed connection on its flights and set three outcomes: carriage on another service, re-routing or a refund.⁹ Air Arabia’s conditions list the same event with three remedies.¹⁰ The GCAA’s passenger rules, CAR PWP, list a hotel where a connection is missed in a delay of 3 to 8 hours and the next probable connection is more than 8 hours later.¹¹

The route and carrier tests are in the flight disruption guide.

The small print

• Orient’s two sections. Section 7, Flight Delay, excludes missed connections. Section 11 is headed Missed Departure / Missed Connection and is the one that pays: USD 1,000 on Travel Secure Plus and USD 250 on Travel Safe Plus.¹
• Mastercard sub-limits. Children, the cardholder’s parents and a domestic helper have lower limits than the cardholder.³
• Daman. Connecting licensed transport appears in Daman’s wording only among its cancellation reasons.⁶
• Clause names. Liva, Section A, 2, Missed Departure and Connections. Mastercard, Missed Connection Coverage. AIG, Section 3, Missed Departure. Allianz Partners, C. Travel Delay Coverage.