Business
After Heathrow, Who Pays for Missed Cruises and Hotel Bookings?
Last Friday’s power outage in Heathrow Airport disrupted vacations across the world, causing countless thousands of travelers to miss prepaid reservations and forgo long-anticipated adventures.
Among them were Sheila Addison, a therapist from Seattle, who missed out on a four-day whisky-tasting in the Scottish Highlands, forfeiting a $500 nonrefundable hotel room and a rare break from her work routine; Zachary Wang and friends from Brown University, who lost $260 in “Les Misérables” tickets, $180 from an Airbnb reservation and two days of spring break in London; and Steve Wehr of Hyde Park, N.Y., who missed two days in Jordan — including the first day of a cruise — a loss of about $1,500.
Who pays when your vacation gets ruined through no fault of your own?
The answer, all too often, is you. Though travelers can recoup some losses through refunded flights and vouchers for meals and hotel stays, airlines generally do not pick up the tab for reservations that can’t be canceled, expensive last-minute flights that must be booked, or missed family events like weddings.
Unfortunately, there is no perfect way to protect yourself, but there are three imperfect ones. Here’s what you can do:
Find the right travel insurance
Mr. Wehr does not expect to recover that $1,500 he lost by missing two days in Jordan. “We didn’t have trip insurance,” he lamented in an email.
It probably wouldn’t have mattered. Travel insurance is generally a “covered peril” type of policy, meaning that the fine print has a list of events that you are covered for, like illness, hijacking and natural disasters. Guess what is almost never on there: airport power outages.
“It covers a lot. It doesn’t cover everything,” said Stan Sandberg, a co-founder of TravelInsurance.com, an online marketplace. Companies try to update policies to match the current travel environment, he said, but only one he knew of covered what happened at Heathrow.
Indeed, Travel Guard’s Deluxe and Preferred plans specifically protect against airport closures caused “by a fire or a power outage.” But they “must result in a delay of the Insured’s Trip for at least 48 consecutive hours,” according to the policy. So even if Mr. Wehr had chosen one of those plans, he would have had to show that his delay was long enough. Claims adjusters are sticklers by nature.
Comparison shop on sites like TravelInsurance.com, or its competitor SquareMouth, and make sure the policies best cover the risks that fit your own circumstances (infirm relatives) or your destination’s (hurricanes). It is usually best to avoid policies offered at checkout by airlines and online travel agencies, which are generally one-size-fits-all, and to not put too much hope into policies included with some credit cards.
Another option is a Cancel for Any Reason, or CFAR, plan that typically allows you to back out of a trip, no questions asked, though you often don’t get a 100 percent refund. But most require you to cancel 48 hours before the trip starts, Mr. Sandberg said — which wouldn’t have helped the typical Heathrow strandee.
But Iris Planamento of Manchester Township, N.J., was not typical. She was on her way to see London, Paris and Normandy with EF Go Ahead Tours when her flight got canceled. The company’s CFAR plan is AnyReason Protection, a $75 add-on that offers trip credit, not your money back — but that expires only at airport check-in.
Ms. Planamento was delighted to confirm she was covered and plans to rebook soon. “Give a plug to the company,” she said — not a common sentiment among stranded travelers.
Leave yourself enough time
Losing one day of a weeklong trip to Paris is a shame, but don’t ask the rest of us for sympathy. Missing a wedding or a cruise ship departure is another story.
Here’s a basic rule: Book flights that are scheduled to arrive at least 24 hours in advance of anything you can’t miss. You’ll want to extend that cushion based on a number of factors, like how crushed you’d be to miss the wedding and whether your cruise ship’s next port of call is reachable by 20 daily flights or one monthly tugboat.
You’ll also want to consider your backup plan. If you’re headed from New York to Chicago and your flight gets canceled, there’s a pretty decent chance you’ll be on another flight that day from the same or another area airport, or, worst case scenario, you could drive overnight. There are fewer options if you’re headed from Hawaii to Dubrovnik, Croatia, to catch an island-hopping cruise.
The carrier you choose matters. As you book, look at how many flights a day each airline has, and lean toward the one with the most flights, even if it’s somewhat more expensive. Airlines are often very stubborn about booking you on competitors, sometimes even if they’re in the same alliance.
Your wallet size matters, too. Those with a financial cushion need less of a time cushion: If you’d be willing to plunk down a few grand for a new last-minute flight, a 24 hour cushion might be plenty.
Fight, efficiently and politely
Gloria-Jean Masciarotte’s flight to London turned around midflight and returned to Boston. She and her family were able to cancel most of their plans, but “the fly in the ointment,” she said, was their $3,146 Airbnb rental. Airbnb did not declare the outage a “major disruptive event” — nor should they have, given the company’s definition of that term. But after two days of texts and phone calls, she said, she was able to finagle a $2,730 credit.
Once something does go wrong, take action. Be the person who waits in line at the customer service desk while on hold with the customer service line and writing the airline via social media. Get in touch with hotels as soon as possible to ask for a refund, but settle for a partial one. Realize that if your prepaid plans include a vacation rental, it is your host, in most cases, who must grant a refund, not the company. They also stand to lose money through no fault of their own, so be really, really nice.
Actually, be nice to everyone, even if you happen to run into, say, the people in charge of Heathrow’s backup power supply. They’re already stressed enough.
Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2025.
China’s exports and imports each set monthly records in April, further cementing the country as the world’s leading trading nation as Beijing prepares to welcome President Trump for a summit next week with Xi Jinping, China’s leader.
China also ran a trade surplus — the excess of exports over imports — of $84.8 billion last month, according to data released on Saturday by the General Administration of Customs. However, that surplus did not set a record. The war in Iran and closure of the Strait of Hormuz pushed up the cost of imported oil and natural gas, causing China’s overall imports to increase slightly faster than exports.
The surplus in April keeps China on track for a third year of roughly trillion-dollar trade surpluses. China posted a $1.19 trillion trade surplus last year, easily breaking the world record of $992 billion that it had set the year before.
Mr. Trump is expected to press Mr. Xi to buy more American goods during their scheduled summit, part of his long-running effort to narrow China’s longtime trade surplus with the United States. But two recent court decisions overturning Mr. Trump’s tariffs on imports have eroded some of his leverage.
China’s exports to the United States jumped 11.3 percent last month compared to its shipments in April of last year, when President Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs produced a slump in imports from China.
The country’s imports from the United States rose only 9 percent in April this year. As a result, its trade surplus with the United States widened by 13 percent.
China has long used state-run purchasing collectives in big categories like farm goods and commercial aircraft to manage its trade with the United States, ensuring it sells three to five times as much as it buys. Mr. Trump and his advisers have criticized that imbalance.
Semiconductor exports doubled last month compared with April of last year. Chinese manufacturers cashed in on the artificial intelligence data center boom even though they cannot yet produce some of the fastest kinds of chips.
Overall exports of electronics and machinery were up 20 percent in April from a year earlier.
China acts in many ways as a shock absorber in global oil markets. Beijing buys more oil for its vast reserves when the price is low, then cuts back purchases when prices are high, as they were last month.
With oil prices spiking upward this spring, the tonnage of China’s oil imports dropped last month to its lowest level since July 2022, when Shanghai’s two-month Covid lockdown reduced demand. The lockdown hurt many of China’s oil-dependent industries.
Because prices rose faster last month than the tonnage declined, China’s overall bill for crude oil imports rose 13 percent from a year earlier. Rising oil prices helped drive China’s overall imports up 25.3 percent in April from a year ago, to a record $274.6 billion. Its exports surged 14.1 percent last month from a year earlier, to a record $359.4 billion.
China has been particularly successful this year in exporting electric cars as well as renewable energy products like wind turbines and solar panels. Exports of electric vehicles were up 52.8 percent last month from a year earlier.
China has been running large, and widening, trade surpluses over the past several years with most of the rest of the world. It has trade deficits with only a handful of countries, including those like Brazil and Australia which have very large commodity exports.
The European Union and many developing countries now find themselves with rapidly growing trade deficits with China. Practically all of them have run their own trade surpluses with the United States to fund their deficits with China, sometimes repackaging goods from China and shipping them on to the United States to do so.
China’s huge trade surpluses are not necessarily a sign of economic strength. They partly reflect very weak spending by Chinese households on imports and domestic goods alike after five years of sliding housing prices wiped out much of the savings of the middle class. This has prompted many families to scrimp on purchases like new cars, leaving Chinese automakers with more cars to export.
“The Chinese economy still demonstrates resilience in trade and industrial supply chains,” said Zhu Tian, an economics professor at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai, after the release of the trade data.
But weak domestic spending and a leveling off in the trade surplus, he said, “suggest that economic growth will continue to face significant challenges for the rest of the year.”
Walt Disney Co.’s ABC is forcefully resisting Federal Communications Commission efforts to soften the network’s programming, accusing the federal agency of an overreach that violates 1st Amendment freedoms.
Last week, the FCC took the unusual step of calling in the licenses of eight Disney-owned television stations for early review. The move — widely interpreted as an effort to chill the network’s speech — came a day after President Trump demanded that ABC fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over a joke about First Lady Melania Trump.
The FCC separately has taken aim at ABC’s daytime discussion show, “The View,” which delves deeply into politics.
The FCC has questioned whether the show, which prominently features Trump critics Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar, could continue toclaim an exemption to rules that require broadcasters to provide equal time for opponents of political candidates.
In its response this week to the FCC, Disney’s Houston television station raised the stakes in “The View” dispute, calling the commission’s actions “unprecedented” and “beyond the Commission’s authority.” The ABC station’s petition for a declaratory ruling said “The View,” has long qualified as a “bona fide” news interview program with freedom to conduct interviews of legally qualified political candidates.
“The Commission’s actions threaten to upend decades of settled law and practice and chill critical protected speech, both with respect to The View and more broadly,” the Houston station KTRK-TV said in the filing.
The network’s firm stance sets up a clash with the Trump administration, including the president’s hand-picked FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who has made no secret of his disdain for Kimmel and other ABC programming. Earlier this year, Carr announced that decades-old exemptions from the so-called “equal time rule,” for some programs, including “The View,” were no longer valid.
In a statement, the FCC said it would “review Disney’s assertion that ‘The View’ is a ‘bona fide news program’ and thus exempt from the political equal time rules,” according to a spokesperson.
“Decades ago, Congress passed a law that generally prohibits broadcast television programs from putting a thumb on the scale in favor of one political candidate over another,” the spokesperson said. “The equal time law encourages more speech and empowers voters to decide the outcome of elections.”
ABC’s strenuous arguments mark a turning point for the Disney-owned outlet.
In December 2024, a month after Trump was elected to a second term, the network quickly settled a lawsuit over statements made by news anchor George Stephanopoulos that Trump found offensive. ABC agreed to pay Trump $15 million to end his legal fight — sparking an outcry among free speech advocates, who accused the network of caving on a case it may have won.
But, over the past year, the network has weathered several storms, including a threat by Carr in September to punish ABC if it didn’t muzzle Kimmel for comments he made in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s death. ABC briefly benched Kimmel to allow tensions to cool but, during the week his show was off the air, protesters loudly bashed Disney, demanding the legendary company stand up for free speech.
Thousands of consumers canceled their Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions in protest.
Protesters swarmed Hollywood Boulevard, protesting ABC’s move to bench Jimmy Kimmel in September over comments he made about the shooting of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Some conservatives, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and commentator Ben Shapiro also criticized Carr’s handling of 1st Amendment issues.
“The days of the FCC as a paper tiger are numbered,” the FCC’s lone Democrat, Anna M. Gomez, said Friday in a statement. “What the public will remember is who complied in advance and who fought back. I’m glad Disney is choosing courage over capitulation.”
The high-profile dispute presents an early challenge for Disney Chief Executive Josh D’Amaro, who succeeded longtime chief Bob Iger in March.
ABC has asked for the full commission — a three member panel of Carr, Gomez and Commissioner Olivia Trusty, a Republican — to rule on the equal time exemption for “The View.” ABC said that, in 2002, it received a ruling from the FCC that granted the exemption, and the show’s format has not changed. “The View” is produced by ABC News.
“Some may dislike certain — or even most — of the viewpoints expressed on The View or similar shows,” the station said in its filing. “Such dislike, however, cannot justify using regulatory processes to restrict those views.”
ABC described a logistical nightmare of providing equal time for political opponents by pointing to California’s crowded primary field of gubernatorial candidates. “Affording equal time would mean accommodating over 60 legally qualified candidates, regardless of their perceived newsworthiness,” the station wrote.
The network said it makes show bookings based on newsworthiness, not partisan politics. It also noted it has invited politicians from both sides of the aisle to appear on “The View,” but some, including Vice President J.D. Vance, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Secretary of State Marco Rubio and entrepreneur Elon Musk, have declined the invitation.
The station also noted that, while the FCC has questioned the exemption for “The View,” the agency hasn’t shown interest in regulating programs on other networks, “including the many voices — conservative and liberal — on broadcast radio.” The FCC also oversees radio station licenses.
“The danger is that the government will simply decide which perspectives to regulate and which to leave undisturbed,” ABC said.
On April 28, Carr called for a review of Disney’s broadcast licenses, including for the Houston station and KABC-TV in Los Angeles, two years before any of them were set to expire. The FCC said the review was part of the agency’s year-old inquiry into Disney’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies and whether they violated federal anti-discrimination rules.
In its Thursday petition, ABC said it had fully complied with the FCC’s request for documents related to its diversity and hiring.
The company has produced more than 11,000 pages of documents to comply with the request, Disney said.
The same week that Disney sent documents to the FCC, Kimmel made a joke on his show about Melania Trump, comparing her glow to that of “an expectant widow.” On April 25, a gunman tried to breach security at the Washington Hilton, where the first couple were on stage for the White House Correspondents’ Assn. Dinner. Shots were fired outside the ballroom.
Three days later, the FCC announced it was requiring early license renewal applications for the Disney-owned stations.
The United States on Friday announced a flurry of new sanctions intended to increase pressure on Iran’s economy, targeting people and companies in China and Hong Kong that have been helping the Iranian military gain access to supplies and war equipment.
The sanctions came ahead of a major summit between President Trump and China’s leader, Xi Jinping, in Beijing next week. China’s support for Iran has become a flashpoint with the Trump administration, which has been trying to compel independent Chinese refineries to stop purchasing Iranian oil.
China is Iran’s biggest buyer of oil, and the Trump administration has said that it is sponsoring terrorism by propping up the Iranian economy.
The new sanctions are aimed at Iran’s military industrial supply chain, and are intended to make it harder for Iran to secure access to the material it needs to build drones and missiles. In addition to China, the sanctions also target people and companies based in Belarus and the United Arab Emirates.
“Under President Trump’s decisive leadership, we will continue to act to keep America safe and target foreign individuals and companies providing Iran’s military with weapons for use against U.S. forces,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement.
The Trump administration has been looking for ways to squeeze Iran’s economy and pressure the Iranian government to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a conduit for the flow of global oil. Oil tankers have had sporadic access to the critical waterway since the war started earlier this year, and the United States and Iran have been fighting over who should control it.
U.S. warships that have been trying to transit the strait have been attacked by Iranian forces. The United States on Friday fired on and disabled two Iranian-flagged oil tankers as they tried to reach an Iranian port.
The Treasury Department has also imposed sanctions on the Chinese “teapot” refineries this month. The independent refineries are major purchasers of Iranian oil. But China invoked a domestic policy ordering its companies to disregard the sanctions.
Mr. Bessent said earlier this week that he expected Mr. Trump to urge Mr. Xi to use the country’s leverage over Iran to pressure it to allow oil cargo to travel.
“Let’s see if China — let’s see them step up with some diplomacy and get the Iranians to open the strait,” Mr. Bessent told Fox News on Monday.
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