Are we entitled to compensation if our plane left Gatwick without us?

Q We were supposed to be flying from Gatwick South Terminal to Spain at lunchtime yesterday, but we got caught up in the security scare. Although we were at the airport in good time, we could not get into South Terminal and ended up spending hours at North Terminal.

As soon as we could we walked back to South Terminal (the shuttle was too crowded) and then spent an age at security. But when we got through, the plane had gone. We assumed the plane would be held for us, but it seems to have left half empty. What are we entitled to?

Laura M

A It was a miserable day for tens of thousands of passengers at Gatwick airport. At 10.28am, the entire South Terminal check-in area and the airport’s railway station were evacuated after security staff discovered a suspicious item in a passenger’s cabin baggage. It took around five hours before travellers were allowed back into the building that handles roughly half of Gatwick’s passengers – and even then, progress was extremely slow for check-in and security.

My understanding is that yours was one of a significant number of flights that left Gatwick with few or even no passengers. Airlines are always focused on keeping their operations on schedule – and, once they were able to dispatch planes from South Terminal, they sent them out even though they knew people like you would miss them.

Most regrettably, you are in a tricky position. A very narrow interpretation of the law is that you have no rights – you failed (through no fault of your own) to reach the gate in time for departure. In practice, airlines will recognise the impossible circumstances and allow you to travel on the next available flight. However, that may not be for several days.

Because your flight was not actually cancelled, you do not benefit from the generous stipulations of air passengers’ rights rules. Had the plane not taken off, you would immediately have attained the right to be rebooked on the earliest flight that would get you to your destination – even on a rival airline – plus accommodation and meals as required until you flew. As it is, the airline need do nothing more than offer you a seat when it can.

All I can suggest is that you consult your travel insurance to see if it will pay anything for your regrettably late arrival.

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Q Is it cheaper/better to get travel health insurance for a year for multiple holidays or to get new insurance for each trip?

Poppy C

A For most travellers who take two or more significant trips abroad each year, the best choice is an annual travel insurance policy. For example, the specialist travel insurer Columbus Direct offers a basic “Bronze single trip” policy for 15 days worldwide for £59. For comparison, its “Annual multi-trip bronze” option is only £74. In other words, you can pay £15 (equating to 25 per cent) more and get trips covered for the rest of the year. About the only stipulation is that no trip can be longer than 31 days.

In addition, if you want winter sports cover, the annual cost rises by £22 to £96, reflecting the high level of claims made by skiers and snowboarders – as well as the extra costs when a helicopter is involved in scooping an accident victim off the piste.

Yet when advanced age is factored into the equation, the sums change significantly. For a 70-year-old, the cost for that single trip worldwide inflates to £329. An annual policy is £457 – or £594 with winter sports included. Let’s assume a septuagenarian plans a two-week trip in the US and Canada (for which that “worldwide” premium is particularly punishing) and a separate one-week package to the Mediterranean. By buying single-trip insurance for each, the traveller will save around £60.

Looking at even older travellers (or those with complex pre-existing conditions), the balance tips more substantially towards single-trip insurance. Some insurers may flatly refuse to issue annual policies for elderly travellers, for whom some pre-existing conditions are almost inevitable. Their reasoning: covering an 80-year-old with lots of travel ambitions for a full year on perhaps a dozen trips represents a very high likelihood of a claim. For the younger among us, though, annual travel insurance represents an excellent deal.

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Q What’s the most overrated city you’ve ever visited?

Jay C

A Probably the one that I am looking forward to visiting a week from today: New York. It’s a metropolis I enjoy, but I believe it is overrated in the minds of many travellers compared with other, nearby cities that don’t get the attention they deserve.

Boston, Philadelphia and Washington DC are, in their own ways, at least as rewarding as Manhattan and the other boroughs of New York City, with dimensions and depths that the Big Apple lacks. So, I would like to see visitors recognising New York as just one in a string of great cities along the northeast US coast – and, if you are making the journey down the eastern seaboard, I suggest you also check out Providence, New Haven and Baltimore along the way.

Slightly to rework your question: there are very few cities that I have visited to which I have no strong desire to return. Staying in the US for a moment, I think I have spent enough time in Dallas (though elsewhere in Texas I would return happily to, for instance Austin, Houston and San Antonio). Among the capital cities of central America, I have no great wish to return to San Jose (where I was once mugged), Tegucigalpa or Managua.

In Europe, almost every city has appeal. Oddly, for someone who adores Italian cities, I don’t need to return to Messina in Sicily – only because, for complicated reasons, I have visited the place sufficiently and would prefer to discover another city on Italy’s largest island.

Asia has some big and bewildering cities: I don’t find Jakarta and Taipei enticing prospects. Across in Australia, I believe I may have exhausted all the charms of Townsville in Queensland. And there is a scattering of sub-Saharan African capitals that do not have a special place in my heart: Windhoek in Namibia, Lusaka in Zambia, and Banjul in Gambia.

Apart from that, I am happy to travel to any city again – but I am more focused on visiting new locations.

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Q We are due to travel next Friday from London St Pancras to Paris with a connection to Colmar in eastern France. We have noticed over the last couple of days that a number of Eurostar trains have been cancelled. What will happen if our train is cancelled – can we get the next one in both London and Paris?

Christine W

A How lovely to have the prospect of a visit to the charming Alsatian town of Colmar: carved by canals, decorated by half-timbered houses, and punctuated with some excellent museums. Colmar hosts no fewer than six Christmas markets; they all get underway on 26 November, three days before your intended visit.

Your proposed travel arrangements are excellent. They start with a Eurostar train from London to Paris Nord, followed by a 10-minute walk to Est station (which has some good places to eat and drink). Take the TGV express to Strasbourg, then change for the final half-hour leg to Colmar. Overall the journey takes less than six hours and winds through some lovely scenery.

It is concerning, though, to see the significant number of Eurostar cancellations between London and Paris. Yesterday three trains were axed each way; today and tomorrow, one round trip. Eurostar tells me: “Due to changes in operating conditions, we have revised our timetable, which has resulted in some delays and cancellations.” Digging deeper, it turns out that trains through the Channel Tunnel are being cancelled due to a combination of adverse weather and industrial action in France.

Everything is shown as on time on the day of your outbound trip – next Friday, 29 November – but the deeper we get into winter, the greater the possibility of disruption. If Eurostar cancels your particular train, get online at once and try to rebook (everyone else will be doing so, too). If you can comfortably catch an earlier train, then you will simply have more time in Paris – a benefit, in my opinion.

But if only a later train is available, or your Eurostar is cancelled at very short notice, then you will have to rely on “Hotnat”, a protocol that allows you to hop on the next available train. This agreement between European high-speed train operators allows travellers to take the next available high-speed service, free of charge. The final leg to Colmar should be fine, too.

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