Warning - flight cancellation and travel insurance

[Radiatorvalves]

I recently had a weekend break in Europe - booked 6 months ago. Our return flight from France to London was cancelled due to a French air traffic control strike and all of us needed to get back to UK for family and work commitments.

BA were hopeless. Spent an hour on the phone and the only solutions they could come up with got us back to the UK almost 24 hours too late, with an overnight in Spain. We therefore booked an EasyJet flight which left earlier the same day - effectively losing a day of our weekend break.

BA has refunded the cancelled flight, but will not cover the cost of the EasyJet flight. I have spoken to my insurance company, and they won't pay up either.

This isn't about a huge amount of money - £60ish. However, I am pretty hacked off both with BA for not getting us home and also with the insurance company who are saying this is not their responsibility.

Check your policies carefully. If we had been somewhere more exotic, and in the same situation, we could have been seriously out of pocket. If travel insurance (reputable company, annual cover) doesn't cover you for getting you home when a flight is cancelled, what else are they excluding?

You were going to be brought home - a day late. So the airline did cover that .
Their ts and cs are usually only to get you to a destination. How and when is not guaranteed.

insurance does not usually cover loss of earnings and consequential losses . sorry.

Pretty standard. They were able to get you home.

They've compensated you for the flight not taken, you can't be in credit for the flight you did take as well. You can't expect to have a free half of the journey. It's the French ATC you should be pissed off at not BA who by all accounts did offer you an alternative.

If the op had accepted returning a day later would they have covered expenses say to cover a locum at work ? I suspect not ...

Why would they?

But ba were getting you home the next day?

These things happen. You made the choice not to take the flight theh offered.

BA has refunded the cancelled flight, but will not cover the cost of the EasyJet flight. I have spoken to my insurance company, and they won't pay up either.

That is normal.

60 quid? Oh, do get over yourself. Be thankful you got home safe and sound.

How much did you get back for the cancelled flight? Wasn't it more tan te easy jet one?

I don't understand what you are upset about. The flight was cancelled, you got your money back and then booked a cheaper flight home. Yes you lost some of your day but that is all. Insurance is there to cover monetary loss not inconvenience.

you can buy insurance to cover anything and everything but you have to specify what you want covered and generally you have to pay a lot for anything out of the ordinary.

I don't think you have any thing to complain about either - sorry. when you travel anywhere you run the risk of getting stranded. this could have happened in the uk in the floods. its the risks you take really for the rewards of going somewhere different.

if getting back for family and work commitments was so important then you should have planned for this eventuality or any problems actually and planned to come back a day earlier. that's what most folk do if being home is vital.

I wouldn't have had to check my policy carefully as it would never have occurred to me that BA, or any other airline, would be on the hook for getting around an air traffic controllers's strike. If I couldn't wait to come home the following day, I would have accepted having to suck up the additional cost, at least part of which was presumably recoverable from getting a refund for the BA flight.