Travel delays souring holidays for one in three Aussies

TRAVEL delays can be more than just an inconvenience, with holiday-makers left thousands of dollars out of pocket for extra room nights and meals.

Lauren Britton and boyfriend Rob Pemberton with his parents John and Lynne Pemberton in Bali, before they learned they wouldn’t be going home as planned. Picture: Supplied.

HOLIDAYS should be a recipe for instant relaxation but new research has found more than a third of Australian travellers experience costly flight delays or cancellations on trips.

The research by Southern Cross Travel Insurance showed nearly a quarter of those were delayed for ten hours or more, and five per cent were stranded overseas for over 72-hours.

The US was the biggest offender for flight delays, followed by Bali, China and the UK.

Extreme weather contributed to most of the problems, then mechanical issues, late connections and natural disasters.

More than a third of Australian travellers are inconvenienced by delays or cancellations. Picture: Thinkstock/Getty Images

To make matters worse, eight per cent of passengers were left in the dark as to why they weren’t boarding or going anywhere, or they were told the cause was “unknown”.

Although the European Union forces airlines to refund passengers when flights are delayed by more than five-hours, the same rights do not exist in other jurisdictions.

In Lauren Britton’s case, she was left with just a gift voucher from Jetstar when her flight from Bali to Sydney was cancelled last year as a result of volcanic eruptions.

With no insurance to cover her, Ms Britton estimates she was left $5000 out of pocket after having to pay for an extra four nights’ accommodation, meals, and fork out more for Wi-Fi and phone calls.

Lauren Britton with boyfriend Rob Pemberton in Bali. They ended up $5000 out of pocket when their flights home were delayed by volcanic ash. Picture: Supplied

“The earliest Jetstar could get me on a flight home was in ten days time, but I’d just started a new job and couldn’t taken another ten days off work,” she said.

“We did a lot of digging and were eventually able to get an earlier flight with Virgin Australia but it was a very costly exercise.”

Southern Cross Travel Insurance CEO Craig Morrison said most insurance policies included “delay cover” but they varied from insurer to insurer.

“In all of the policies you’ve got to have a delay of around ten to 12-hours before you can make a claim, and of course if you are delayed for over 12-hours then it gets very important as to what your policy cover limit is,” said Mr Morrison.

“If your delay cover is only $1000 and you’re delayed for five-days then you’ll run out of your $1000 in the first 24-hours.”

SCTI provided delay cover for up to $30,000 or 30-days — whichever came first.

Foreign tourists seeking flight information at Ngurah Rai Airport in Denpasar, during the volcanic ash delays last July. Picture: Agung Parameswara/Getty Images

He said travellers were most likely to experience delays in the United States, because of the way its aviation system was structured.

“Because there’s so much domestic travel, if any one hub gets a problem — like a snowstorm in Denver or Chicago, the whole country will get slowed down, even if the weather’s great in LA and New York,” Mr Morrison said.

“It’s such a big place, but one little blip will cause systemic problems across the whole country.”

He said the EU’s law forcing airlines to compensate or refund passengers for delays that were not due to extraordinary circumstances was “great”.

“All of us who are travellers, we give the airlines our money and we rely on them to get us where we need to go,” he said.