What happens when carriers make changes to a trip?
We’ll let you know about any changes in your itinerary as soon as the carriers inform us and will do our best to help. You’ll see all the details and your options on your trip page.
If the change occurred while you’re already traveling and you don’t see any options in your trip yet, please contact us as soon as you can.
The exact options we offer you will depend on how the change affects your booking and on the carrier who caused the disruption.
When you book with us, we essentially act as an intermediary between you and the carrier — you authorize us to handle the reservation on your behalf, so we can accept or reject alternative options or apply for refunds. You’ll find the full policy in our Terms & Conditions, section 5.
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Cancellations and changes that disrupt the rest of your booking or are greater than 24 hours
If your trip or a part of it gets canceled, your departure changes by more than 24 hours, or the change affects the rest of your booking — for example, if your first flight is delayed and you miss your connection — in most cases, we'll offer you an alternative itinerary or a refund.*
*However, sometimes the carrier offers us an alternative similar to your original flight and we need to choose whether to accept it or not — in that case, we’ll accept it on your behalf and send you an updated itinerary.
Otherwise, we'll automatically request a refund for the changed part of your trip and get back to you with your options.
Unless the exception as described above applies, whether or not the alternative is contributed towards or paid depends on if you have our disruption services.
If you have Disruption Protection, we won't offer you alternatives. Instead, we’ll either offer you instant compensation in the form of Kiwi.com Credit, which you can use to book a replacement flight right away, or we’ll help you get a refund from the carrier.
If you have Disruption Protection Premium, we can cover the expenses for an alternative itinerary to your destination, or send you Kiwi.com Credit or a full refund for your trip — even if the carriers don’t provide it.
The only time our disruption services don’t apply is under extraordinary circumstances that neither we nor the carriers could prevent.
Changes of less than 24 hours that don’t disrupt the rest of your booking
If your trip gets changed or delayed by less than 24 hours and you can catch all your connections from the same booking, your options will depend on what the carriers offer.
When the carrier asks us to choose whether or not to accept the change, we'll make a decision depending on your booking:
- If your booking consists of multiple carrier reservations in a row — we call this a self-transfer — we'll accept the change on your behalf and send you an updated e-ticket. We do this because it's the best way to keep the rest of your itinerary undisrupted.
- If the disrupted part of your trip only contains 1 carrier reservation, we'll accept the change on your behalf only if it's less than 3 hours or if you're about to travel in less than 48 hours. In all other situations, we'll let you choose whether you want to accept the change or get a refund.
You'll have until 48h before departure to get back to us. If you don't choose an option, we'll accept the change on your behalf so as not to risk you missing the trip altogether.
When the carriers don't let us choose and simply send us their updated itinerary, we'll forward you an updated e-ticket.
You’ll be able to take the changed itinerary without issues, so we won't offer you any alternative options. But if the new times don’t suit you, you can try reaching out directly to the carrier — they might offer you something when you ask. Otherwise, your only option is to request a trip change.
Can I handle this directly with the carriers?
Short answer — yes. If we haven’t automatically accepted the schedule change or a refund for you and you haven’t picked any alternative or refund from us, you can handle this directly with the carriers. Their options might slightly differ and only cover their part of the itinerary, but everything will depend on their policy.
Check this article for more info about your options.
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