After two quiet summers, travel has resumed with new vigour, and this year brings people both strong positive emotions as well as disappointment of not being able to reach their destination on time and exhaustive waiting in crowded airports. Cancelled and delayed flights due to lack of aircraft or staff have caused change in plans to more travellers this year than in the previous two years combined, according to data of BTA Baltic Insurance Company AAS (BTA). 

In the spring of 2020, the world faced massive and unprecedented border closures that trapped thousands of people abroad for several weeks. The dire situation forced insurers to pay compensations to a huge number of people whose flights were cancelled. However, this turned out to be trifle compared to the situation this summer, when more than half of the flights are delayed at major airports and about 5% of all are cancelled due to the lack of spare parts and service personnel.
The severe situation in the overcrowded airports has also considerably affected travellers from Latvia. At this moment already, BTA has received 68% more insurance claims for delayed or cancelled flights than for the entire 2020. While compared to 2021, a completely quiet year in the tourism industry, this increase is even more dramatic – the number of claims this year is 6.3 times higher. 

“Disappointing news from airports keep flowing – about long check-in lines, lack of staff at airports, grumpy passengers and sudden flight cancellations when people are already waiting at the boarding gates. The lack of spare parts stretches the aircraft maintenance time longer and airlines have to borrow liners from each other to conduct the flights. But, it is not much of a help, therefore two-thirds of flights at Europe's largest airports are delayed, and almost 8% of all flights in Frankfurt, for example, are cancelled. If most of our claims paid last year were for cancelled intercontinental flights, then this year the overwhelmingly largest amount of paid claims is for intra-European flights not conducted,” the glum picture describes Kārlis Liepiņš, the Director of BTA Insurance Claims Handling Department.

The number of claims for delayed luggage compared to 2020 has doubled. It is also higher this year than last year and the year before last combined. 

About BTA
BTA Baltic Insurance Company is one of the leading insurance companies in the Baltics, offering the broadest range of non-life insurance services in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. BTA employs more than 1,000 employees in the Baltics. The sole shareholder of BTA is Vienna Insurance Group AG (VIG), the leading insurance group both in Austria and in the entire Central and Eastern European (CEE) region. Around 50 insurance companies in 30 countries form a Group with a long-standing tradition, strong brands and close customer relations. The more than 25,000 employees in the VIG take care of the day-to-day needs of more than 22 million customers. VIG shares have been listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange since 1994. The VIG Group has an A+ rating with stable outlook by the internationally recognised rating agency Standard & Poor's. VIG cooperates closely with the Erste Group, the largest retail bank in Central and Eastern Europe.

Additional information:
Elīna Zvejniece
Marketing and Public Relations Department Director
BTA Baltic Insurance Company AAS
e-mail elina.zvejniece@bta.lv