Airline passenger news and views

Catriona, I have been there. A mixture of road works and accidents ahead and I also missed my flight. My travel insurance company said that I should have left more time for my journey. The annoying thing was that, on this one particular occasion, I actually did leave plenty of time !

As an insurance assessor, my first answer would be that you did not leave enough time for your journey. You know that accidents can occur and a few telephone calls could have pre-warned you of actual or pending road works.

I would not expect insurance policies to cover/refund flights over travel delay. I know how slow, unpredictable the M25 can be and always leave plenty of time or find an alternative route to the airport.

I am glad it is not just me that had this problem. I tried hard to get my insurance to pay and they said no way. Apparently it is entirely my responsibility to get myself to the airport.

I know the M25 is a pain. You would be better to take the back roads where you can always find another route. Once you are on the M25 you are trapped if there is an accident.

This is the nature of travelling on busy roads the best way to deal with it is finding alternative routes or leaving plenty of time.

I wish insurance companies would cover these types of synarios. I can bet that there are many travellers missing flights due to heavy traffic.

It takes ages to read through reams and reams of insurance small print, it's difficult to absorb and easy to overlook clauses/exclusions like this.

People cheat on insurance claims and assume that there is always someone else that should pay for either their mistakes or for things that just happen. That makes the insurance companies more suspicious and makes problems for the customers that are honest and prudent in their claims.

Isn't it down to the individual to allow well and truly enough time to get to the airport? I think it is all about people leaving it to the last moment and getting there by the 'skin of their teeth'.....the airlines cannot wait for you.

I nearly (minutes to spare) missed a flight from Stanstead. My problem was partly roads but mostly the airport parking system.

There was a delay getting into the short-term car park because the barrier system was not working properly. So, if you are the car park operator and your equipment has packed up so that you cannot issue tickets, do you:

a) recognise it is your fault and just let people through.

b) hold everyone up whilst you think about how to make more money.

They chose option b) - bastards

Yes airports could improve their short-term car parks with dynamic information boards at the barrier point to direct us to a specific level/free parking space, saving us the time of driving up and down to find a space.

Perhaps we should make better use of public transport to get to airports, we are far too reliant on cars these days.

Public transport is defiantly the cheaper option and delays causing missing flights will more likely to be covered with travel insurance.

I think that John has got it right. We all rely too much on cars and live in hope that the roads will be ok. At least with public transport you are doing you bit for the environment and also usually going to incur less delays.

Public transport isn't always reliable too though is it? Trains are often delayed, buses do not turn up, it's all about giving yourself plenty of time and it also takes the stress out of the whole situation too.

I think most people assume that the motorways will be clear, unfortunately this is not always the case. Would you leave only just enough time to get to a job interview, if so then undoubtably you will not get the job!