Travel insurance claim knocked back

Ashville

Long story short, our flight was cancelled due to the well-publicised Air Traffic control failure back in July. We were given a new flight which arrived over 48 hours late so I am trying to claim for the delay through our travel insurance (Coverwise/AXA). They have knocked it back as 'London ATC failure' is not included in the policy wording.

I believe that ATC failure should fall under their wording of 'Mechanical breakdown of or a technical fault occurring in the public transport on which you are booked to travel'. 

Does anyone in the know think I've got a chance here or should I just give up? It's for £400.

Thanks in advance for any help - even if it's to say, 'yeah don't bother'!

elsien

In what way do you consider ATC to be public transport! 

Ashville

I take your point. I guess I believed the flight to be counted as public transport and the ATC to be an integral part of this service. So basically I can't claim from the airline as ATC failure is 'extraordinary circumstances' and I can't claim via insurance either.

TELLIT01

The ATC failure was a result of a fire in an electric substation so entirely out of the control of ATC.  Therefore also out of the control of the airline and no recourse in that direction.  I'm guessing that because it is such an unusual occurrence that the travel insurer is trying to get out of paying as it's not on their list of events which can be claimed for.

I can't imagine anybody would search the policy wording for such an occurrence, but when Covid struck I discovered that our travel policy only covered 4 very specific 'natural disasters'.  Funnily enough 'global pandemic' wasn't one of them.  Thankfully I was reimbursed by the airline anyway.

michael1234

I would probably ignore any reply unless it is from someone who has been in a similar situation to you or has specific knowledge e.g. by working in the travel insurance business. You get a good clue from the post count.

Ashville

Interesting to know more details on what happened in that instance, thanks. I can see I'm going to get nowhere with this claim, but it still stings that through no fault of our own we lost 2 days of our holiday and there's nothing we can claim for that from anywhere. 

MyRealNameToo

Its always helpful if you can link to your particular policy wording, a list of the ones they sell are at https://www.coverwise.co.uk/quote/Documents.aspx 

These sorts of things always comes down ultimately to the wording of the policy. Looking at https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-5483948.pdf this had a similar wording to a random cover wise policy and the FOS disagreed that a breakdown in ATC counted as the "public transport you are travelling on" being broken down. The wording in Coverwise policy I saw is slightly wider as it also includes technical faults but it doesnt bode well for the claim.