If you're flying from the EU on any airline, you're covered; if you're flying to the EU on any EU-based airline, you're also covered; and even if you bought a fare on, say, Delta.com to Italy but Alitalia operated the flight in a code-share arrangement, you're still covered, even though the selling airline was an American carrier. If you bought travel insuranceWhile some policies may not cover electrical outages or computer system shutdowns, others will. According to travel insurance aggregator Squaremouth.com, insurers AXA Assistance USA and Tin Leg stated they'd cover the latest Delta snafu because an airline computer outage falls under the policy definition of "mechanical breakdown of the common carrier" in their policies' fine print. ADVERTISEMENTThe airlines have experienced so many computer outages over the last few years they're hardly even news anymore, despite that fact that they've stranded thousands of passengers and caused untold economic damage. You can cancel and get a refundPassengers can ask for a refund, even on a "non-refundable" airfare, if a flight is canceled or "severely" delayed (severe varies from airline to airline but generally a two-hour delay qualifies).

Source: Huffington Post August 08, 2016 20:35 UTC