Does Travel Insurance Cover Missed Flights?

It’s important to remember that travel insurance doesn’t cover everything that can go wrong on a trip – and lots of things can go wrong. For example, lots of travelers miss flights for lots of reasons and some of those reasons are covered by travel insurance while others are not.

A missed flight occurs when a traveler cannot make it to the gate in time to get on board their scheduled flight. They may have been in a car accident, or they may be sick, or their passport may have been stolen, but the traveler misses their flight going or coming and now they are looking at a claim for trip cancellation or trip interruption (as they’re stuck and can’t get home).

It’s important to understand that a missed flight is different from a missed connection. Read about how travel insurance covers missed connections too.

How Travel Insurance Covers Missed flights

The travel insurance coverage for missed flights is isolated to trip cancellation and interruption, as in you missed your scheduled flight and now you’re forced to cancel your trip or you can’t get home.

So the covered reasons that a traveler can make a travel insurance claim for a missed flights can be found in the plan’s coverage for trip cancellation and trip interruption. Typically, the travel insurance provider will reimburse the traveler for their pre-paid and non-refundable trip expenses if they have to cancel or interrupt their trip for a covered reason.

No Travel Insurance Cover for Missed Flights Like These

Travel insurance will not cover missed flights no matter what happens to cause you to miss your flight. For example, travel insurance cannot cover missed flights in situations like these:

• You woke up late
• You got lost getting to the airport
• The security line was jammed and you couldn’t get through in time
• You forgot your passport and can’t get through security

These are all situations where the traveler could have/should have planned better and travel insurance can’t help.