Any travel insurance or travel experts out there please?

[Houseplantmad]

We are due to fly to Australia on Boxing Day to arrive a day ahead of a family wedding taking place. I've just gone on to check something to find that our booked flights from the UK have been cancelled and instead we are scheduled to leave 12 hours later with 24 hours in Singapore which means we will arrive now several hours after the wedding.

I can't believe I wasn't notified by the travel agent! This means a non-refundable hotel booking and onward internal flights (booked by me separately) now have to be changed, at presumably greater expense, as it's so close to travel now; and we will need to book a hotel in Singapore plus whatever visa is applicable.

I will call the agent and airline today to see if we can go from a different airport on Boxing Day without the overnight in Singapore but I am wondering whether any of this is extra expense is likely to be covered by our good but fairly standard travel insurance.

I’d be on to the travel agent first to determine whether anything can be changed to allow you to get there first the wedding and why they didn’t inform you of these fundamental changes. You need to determine whether these changes mean the airline needs to compensate you.

You are arriving a day before a wedding in Australia? Do you not suffer from jet lag?

If it’s a big change, so you should be able to change flights. I would think this, in practice, will be very difficult. Are the other flights full? What could you get? Have you looked?

Agents can be useless. If you book direct, you get the alerts. I would always do this. Then you negotiate! However you have a high risk strategy with flying so late.

Read the small print of the insurance. It will be clear about what you can claim for. I think the onus is on the airline, not insurance. You are offered flights. Just not what you want.

You may also want to see if you have travel disruption included in your cover. When our flight last summer was cancelled and that caused additional costs we weren’t covered as we didn’t have that.