Our disruption services help if your itinerary gets disrupted because airlines changed, canceled, or delayed any part of it. Whether you’re covered depends on whether your booking has Disruption Protection or Connection Protection.
Disruption Protection
If your trip gets disrupted, 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.
We calculate your compensation based on:
- The price of the alternative with an arrival time closest to your original one
- If we find out about the disruption less than 5h to departure of your first flight or when you’re already in transit, we’ll cover up to the entire cost of your alternative trip.
- If we find out about the disruption 5 hours or more before the departure of your first flight, we’ll cover up to the price of your itinerary.
Connection Protection
This coverage is specifically designed for self-transfer itineraries — trips involving multiple airlines or separate bookings that normally wouldn’t be able to help you if a change to one flight affected another.
Say you booked Prague → London → New York with self-transfer, and your Prague → London flight is delayed. That causes you to miss your New York flight, which is on a different airline. Without protection, you’d need to arrange and pay for a new flight yourself. The airline that delayed you is only responsible for that specific flight — not your whole trip.
If you have Connection Protection and a disruption breaks your connection, 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. We calculate your Kiwi.com Credit amount based on the cost of the cheapest alternative that gets you to your destination within 24 hours of your original arrival time, up to the price of your original booking.
- In some cases, help with accommodation if an overnight stay is needed.
Instant compensation for direct Ryanair flights
We offer this protection on non-stop Ryanair itineraries with Kiwi.com Benefits. You can add this coverage when booking your trip, or afterwards. If your trip is canceled or significantly delayed, you’ll get compensation equal to or more than what the airline would refund you.
We calculate your compensation based on:
- The price of the alternative with an arrival time closest to your original one
- If we find out about the disruption less than 5h to departure of your first flight or when you’re already in transit, we’ll cover up to the entire cost of your alternative trip.
- If we find out about the disruption 5 hours or more before the departure of your first flight, we’ll cover the price of your itinerary.
We’ll ensure you’re compensated quickly, so that you can rebook your disrupted trip right away.
Depending on how you paid for your trip, your compensation will arrive in one of two ways:
- Visa or Mastercard: We’ll immediately refund you back to your payment card. The compensation may take up to a few minutes to arrive.
- Apple Pay, Google Pay, and all other forms of payment: We’ll add Kiwi.com Credit to your Kiwi.com account. This money will be instantly available and ready to use.
Please keep in mind that if you already sought a refund or replacement trip from the airline, you’d no longer be eligible for this compensation.
When exactly would our disruption services apply?
We’ll cover you in all these cases:
- Airline cancellations
- Schedule changes or delays that affects the rest of your itinerary (for example, if a delay causes you to miss your remaining connections, or if your itinerary becomes impossible to take)
- Schedule changes of more than 24 hours or more than 5 hours if you have Disruption Protection and direct flight
There are only a few exceptions:
- Extraordinary circumstances that are beyond our or the airline’s control
- Situations where you made changes directly with the airline or added baggage to a no-bag-itinerary
- Situations where you missed your flight or couldn’t take it because of a missing visa or other documents
What if I didn’t add a disruption service?
We’ll still help where we can, and you can ask us to find an alternative trip. However, we won’t be able to cover the costs, such as rebooking or overnight stays.
We can help you apply for a refund from the airline, but what you get and when depends on airline policies and relevant laws. They might be able to offer you alternative flights, but it’s limited to their availability and scheduling.
Is there anything else I should know?
If you choose a refund in Kiwi.com Credit, we’ll keep any refund we might receive from the airline, and you agree not to accept an alternative flight from them. You can still claim compensation directly from the airline under EC261.
You’re always free to deal with the airlines directly, though they may offer fewer options. They’re only required to refund or rebook the specific segment of your trip that they canceled or changed — not your entire trip.