What is Disruption Protection and why is it useful?
Our Disruption Protection is a unique extra service that covers you if your trip gets disrupted because carriers changed, canceled, or delayed any part of it. We have two levels of coverage, Basic and Premium.
If your trip gets disrupted because carries canceled, delayed, or significantly changed any part of it:
- With Disruption Protection Basic 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 carrier on your behalf.
- With Disruption Protection Premium we’ll allow you to choose between an alternative trip from any carrier or instant Kiwi.com Credit. It can also cover hotels and other expenses as needed.
You can decide which level of Disruption Protection you’d like when you book your trip. It's also possible to add our Premium version afterwards, but its availability depends on your departure date. If it is still available, you’ll be able to add it in your trip page.
Why is it useful?
Short answer — with Disruption Protection, you get more options than carriers 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:
- With 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.
- With Basic, we’ll offer you Kiwi.com Credit or an assisted refund through the carrier. The amount of Credit we’ll offer you takes a range of factors into consideration, such as whether you’ve already started traveling, the price originally paid for your booking to the carriers, and the current prices of replacement flights. As for the carrier refund, its speed and amount depend on carrier policies and relevant laws.
Read more here.
Also, we always guarantee your whole Kiwi.com trip — even if you travel with multiple carriers or have different carrier reservations (this is what we call a self-transfer).
Let’s say your flight from Prague to London is delayed, which causes you to miss your self-transfer connection from London to New York. If you have the 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
If you have Disruption Protection Basic, we’ll offer you Kiwi.com Credit to put towards a flight from London to New York.
What if I don’t add it?
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 carriers. You can also request an alternative directly from them without our assistance.
The carriers 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 carrier 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 carrier 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 carriers here.
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