Travel Insurance For Adverse Weather Conditions - Advice and Information

Summary: As an Essential Travel insurance policy holder, find out what will be covered when adverse weather affects your travel plans.

What is my first course of action as a policy holder?

If your travel plans have been disrupted by adverse weather, make sure you contact your travel company or airline as soon as possible. Please note that if you fail to check in as per your original itinerary as a result of adverse weather (or related travel restrictions), that cover will not be excluded for this reason.

White Horse Insurance Info

The information below is intended to update our customers who are either travelling at present or who are booked to travel in the near future.

• Extension of Cover

If you are booked to return home and experience disrupted travel arrangements due to adverse weather, an automatic extension of insurance cover will apply to your policy, free of charge, for the period stated within your policy. (This is normally up to 72 hours.)

• Cancellation

Travel insurance policies underwritten by White Horse Insurance Ireland Ltd do not offer cancellation cover due to an adverse weather condition.

• Curtailment

Curtailment is not covered in the event of adverse weather under the policy terms and conditions.

• Travel Delay

If your departure from the UK/ Ireland has been delayed for 12 hours or more because of adverse weather, you can make a claim for Travel Delay. You will receive £20 for the first 12 hour period, after which you can claim for a further £10 for each extra 12 hour period that you are delayed up to a maximum value of £100 (or £150 on a superior policy). This works out to 4 days of cover on a standard policy and 6 1/2 days on a superior policy.

Also, EU directive 261 applies to delayed or cancelled flights, whereby the airline must compensate customers for additional accommodation, subsistence and alternative flight, or flight refund for delayed flights.

Again, if a customer fails to check in as per their original itinerary because of the adverse weather, that cover will not be excluded for this reason.

• Travel Abandonment

If you have been delayed in departing the UK / Ireland for the applicable set time period because of adverse weather, you will be covered to claim for the abandonment of your trip, if you choose to do so.

Please note that customers can only claim for EITHER the Travel Delay or the Travel Abandonment cover, not both.

• Missed Departure

Any customer who incurs reasonable additional travel and accommodation costs in reaching their destination, or fails to reach the international point of departure because of the failure of public transport will be covered subject to their policy conditions.

• Baggage & Baggage Delay

Any baggage lost or misplaced during transit throughout the course of the adverse weather conditions will be covered, subject to the individual terms and conditions of cover.

• Scheduled Airline Failure

If you have a superior policy, you'll qualify for scheduled airline failure cover, and you'll have cover if your airline goes bust. However, you will not be able to make a claim in the event of adverse weather, where, for instance, your flights are cancelled.

• Premium Refunds

No premium refunds are to be made outside of the cooling off period. Premium refunds within the cooling off period should be processed by the sales agent as normal.

For Single Trip policies, White Horse Insurance Ireland Limited will permit the transfer of a policy to an alternative booking within the same geographical area, provided that travel commences within 30 days of the original departure date.

Contact Us

If any of these points are unclear, or if you would like more information, please don't hesitate to contact us directly to get in touch with one of our friendly consultants.