What are our disruption services and why are they useful?
Our disruption services cover you if your trip gets disrupted because airlines changed, canceled, or delayed any part of it.
If your trip gets disrupted:
- With Disruption Protection, we’ll offer you instant compensation in the form of Kiwi.com Credit — which can be used to book a replacement flight right away — or to apply for a refund from the airline on your behalf.
- If you have Disruption Protection Premium we’ll allow you to choose between an alternative trip from any airline, instant Kiwi.com Credit, or an instant monetary refund depending on when we learn about the disruption. It can also cover hotels and other expenses as needed.
Why are they useful?
Short answer — with our disruption services, you get more options than airlines offer and we cover your costs even when they don’t.
If there’s a disruption that prevents you from getting to your destination or a change of more than 24h:
- If you have Disruption Protection, we’ll offer you Kiwi.com Credit or an assisted refund through the airline. The amount of Credit we’ll offer you takes a range of factors into consideration, such as when we learn about the disruption, whether you’ve already started traveling, the price of your booking, the original arrival time, and the current prices of replacement flights. As for the airline refund, its speed and amount depend on airline policies and relevant laws.
- If you have Disruption Protection Premium, you can choose to take one of the alternative trips we offer, or we can refund you for the parts of your itinerary you couldn’t take or for the full trip.
Read more here.
Also, we always guarantee your whole Kiwi.com trip — even if you travel with multiple airlines or have different airline reservations (this is what we call a self-transfer).
Let’s say we find out your flight from Prague to London is delayed prior to departure, which causes you to miss your self-transfer connection from London to New York. If you have Disruption Protection, we’ll offer you Kiwi.com Credit to put towards a flight from London to New York.
If you have Disruption Protection Premium, we’ll offer you alternatives to New York and book whichever best suits your schedule. If you’d prefer not to travel on to New York, we’ll refund you the full cost of your original flight.
What if I don’t add them?
We’ll still help you if there are disruptions and offer you alternative trips, but we won’t help cover the costs or guarantee a refund — a refund will depend on the airlines. You can also request an alternative directly from them without our assistance.
The airlines are likely to only reimburse the parts of your trip they canceled or significantly changed. They have no obligation to cover any other reservations you might have.
In the above example of a missed flight to New York, the airline operating your first flight from Prague to London won’t offer a reimbursement or an alternative to New York because that leg of your trip wasn’t a part of their reservation.
The airline operating your flight to New York won’t offer you options either since their flight was not the one that experienced the delay.
You can read more about your rights in case of disruptions and what you can expect from us and the airlines here.
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