Complainants who were stopped from boarding their flight due to not having a valid visa for transit in India have lost their dispute against their insurer’s decision to decline their claim. 

The travellers were scheduled to fly from Vietnam to Mumbai, where they would have a two-hour transit before flying on to Cairo.

However, the claimants were refused entry onto the plane departing from Vietnam after discovering they had no visa to transit through Mumbai. After being informed about an extended timeframe to receive the visa from the Indian consulate, the complainants arranged another flight to Egypt via Oman.

The insureds say they had no knowledge that they were required to have a visa to transit in India and sought cover for the additional flights, which they contend arose from an unexpected event.

Tokio Marine declined the claim, saying that its policy did not respond to errors or omissions in booking arrangements or failures to obtain relevant visas, passports or travel documents.

The Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA) agreed that the circumstances of the loss were outside the policy’s scope of cover, as it had been caused by the travellers’ failure to secure the required visa. 

“I accept the complainants were not visiting India and their pre-planned journey only included a transit via Mumbai,” AFCA said.

“Even though from the complainants’ view this visa requirement was unexpected, I cannot accept it was beyond their control for the purposes of this claim.

“This is because the complainants could have arranged visas for the entire trip, which included several destinations and/or transits.”

AFCA also accepted that even if it considered the visa requirement unexpected and “beyond the complainant’s control,” Tokio Marine still would have been entitled to decline the claim as it excluded cover for failures to get the required visa.

Click here for the ruling.