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Trip planning comes with plenty of excitement — but also plenty of risk. Flights get canceled, plans change, and emergencies happen. That’s where trip cancellation and trip interruption insurance can step in to help. If you have the Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card (Rates & Fees) or Chase Sapphire Reserve® (Rates & Fees), you may already be covered for thousands of dollars in unexpected travel costs — automatically with no activation or extra purchase required.
In this guide, we’ll break down what’s covered, who qualifies, how the benefit works, and how to file a claim. Also, for those who have a small business, we'll include how the Chase Sapphire coverage compares to coverage from the Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card.
Page Contents
- What Does Chase Sapphire Trip Cancellation Insurance Cover?
- What Is Trip Interruption Insurance?
- Who Does the Chase Sapphire Trip Cancellation Cover?
- What Counts as a Covered Trip?
- What Counts as a Covered Loss?
- Chase Sapphire Trip Delay Insurance
- What Isn't Covered?
- How To File a Claim
- Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card Trip Cancellation and Trip Interruption
- Final Thoughts
What Does Chase Sapphire Trip Cancellation Insurance Cover?
Chase Sapphire trip cancellation insurance covers you and your immediate family members if a covered loss prevents you from traveling and causes you to cancel your travel plans. It provides reimbursement — up to $10,000 per person and $20,000 per covered trip, with a maximum limit of $40,000 per 12-month period.
Take a look at this example: A family of four uses their card to pay for a trip that's canceled due to sickness, severe weather, or another covered situation. The cost of the trip was $6,000 per person for a total of $24,000. In this case, they would be reimbursed $20,000 since that is the maximum amount per trip.
Chase Sapphire Reserve vs. Chase Sapphire Preferred trip cancellation
There are two Chase Sapphire cards: the Sapphire Preferred and the Sapphire Reserve. Each offers Chase trip cancellation insurance. There are no differences between the two cards in terms of the type of trip cancellation insurance.
What Is Trip Interruption Insurance?
Chase Sapphire trip interruption insurance includes the same coverage amounts as the trip cancellation insurance but covers you during your trip instead of before it.
Simply put, Chase trip cancellation insurance covers you from the time you book your trip until the location and time of your departure. On the other hand, Chase trip interruption insurance covers you from the moment you depart until you return home.
Who Does the Chase Sapphire Trip Cancellation Cover?
This insurance covers the primary cardholder and their immediate family. Chase has a fairly broad definition of immediate family, which includes:
- Spouse or domestic partner and their parents
- Children (including stepchildren)
- Parents (including stepparents)
- Brothers and sisters
- Grandparents and grandchildren
- Aunts, uncles, nieces, and nephews
- Legal guardians and wards
- Spouses and domestic partners of any of the people listed
Furthermore, the cardholder does not have to be present with the people traveling for the coverage to be in effect.
What Counts as a Covered Trip?
Chase defines a covered trip as a travel booking where any portion of the cost has been charged to the cardholder's account or where Chase Ultimate Rewards from the cardholder's account were redeemed for the booking.
Chase trip cancellation insurance covers you even if you only paid a small portion of the expense with your card. For example, if you use your Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve to pay for the taxes and fees on your award booking, even through a different program, that is enough to provide coverage.
What Counts as a Covered Loss?
Chase defines a covered loss as any of the following:
- Accidental bodily injury, loss of life, or sickness experienced by you, a traveling companion, or an immediate family member of you or a traveling companion.
- Severe weather that prevents a reasonable and prudent person from beginning or continuing on a covered trip.
- Named storm warning.
- Change in military orders for you, your spouse, or your domestic partner.
- A call to jury duty or receiving a subpoena from the courts, neither of which can be postponed or waived.
- Finding you or your traveling companion’s place of permanent residency to be uninhabitable due to being burglarized, or damaged from fire or flood.
- You or your traveling companion’s lodging accommodations become uninhabitable.
- Death or hospitalization of you or your travel companion's host at your destination.
- An organized strike affecting public transportation and causing you to miss either 20% of the trip's duration or the departure of a prepaid cruise or tour.
- Quarantine imposed by a physician for health reasons.
Additionally, these are specific to Chase trip cancellation insurance only:
- A terrorist incident within 25 miles of your home or destination within 30 days of your trip.
- A travel warning related to terrorism is issued in you or your traveling companion's city of residence within 10 days of your trip departure or at your destination within 30 days of your arrival.
These items are specific to Chase trip interruption insurance only:
- Terrorist incident within 25 miles of an airport, confirmed lodging, or host at a destination in your itinerary.
- Travel warning due to terrorism issued by a U.S. government agency within 25 miles of an airport, confirmed lodging, or host at your destination that's issued during your or your traveling companion's trip
What's not covered?
You'll notice the absence of any delays or cancellations by the carrier, travel agency, or tour operator (unless the cancellation is caused by severe weather or organized strikes). This means that missed connections and stays due to delays aren't covered. Neither is your travel provider's financial insolvency.
However, under certain circumstances, some costs associated with delays will be covered by another benefit called trip delay reimbursement, detailed in the Sapphire Preferred Benefits Guide.
Chase Sapphire Trip Delay Insurance
Another instance where trip delay might come into play is if your flight is canceled. Chase Sapphire flight cancellation insurance falls under Chase's trip delay protection. Trip delay kicks in after a delay of six hours for the Sapphire Reserve or 12 hours or a forced overnight stay for the Sapphire Preferred.
These delays would likely be the case with a canceled flight. You can claim up to $500 of “reasonable expenses” for each ticket purchased with your Sapphire card. Chase defines reasonable expenses as:
“Including meals, lodging, toiletries and medication. This benefit applies to reasonable expenses incurred during Your delay not otherwise covered by Your Common Carrier, another party, or Your primary personal insurance policy. You will be refunded the excess amount (up to the maximum) once all other reimbursement has been exhausted up to the limit of liability.”
You'll find more details in our post about Chase Sapphire Reserve travel and purchase insurance benefits. We also have an article covering how to file a flight delay claim with Chase.
What Isn't Covered?
The coverage is slightly different between the Chase Sapphire trip cancellation and Chase Sapphire trip interruption insurance protections. Here are the details.
Not covered by either:
- Change in your financial or business circumstances.
- Pre-existing conditions.
- Any accident, injury, or loss caused by attempting anything illegal, including street racing, any professional sport for which you are paid or receive a prize, suicide or self-harm, war, flying on a rocket-propelled aircraft, or where there are U.S. trade and economic sanctions in place.
- Any loss due to the voluntary surrender of unused vouchers, tickets, credits, coupons, or travel privileges.
- Travel arrangements that are scheduled to take place after the twenty-sixth (26th) week of pregnancy.
- Any loss for any trip booked while on a waiting list for specified medical treatment or losses related to trips you took for medical treatments.
- Disinclination to travel due to civil unrest, epidemic, or pandemic.
- Failure of you or your travel companion to obtain necessary visas, passports, or other documents required for travel.
Additional items not covered by trip cancellation:
- Areas with known terrorist activity.
Additional items not covered by trip interruption:
- Terrorist incidents or warnings within 25 miles of you or your travel companion's permanent residence, or the airport or lodging accommodations for your trip within 30 days of your original trip deposit.
- Travel arrangements that are canceled or changed by the carrier, travel agency, or tour operator unless due to severe weather or a strike.
It's important to note that we have summarized what is and isn't included, but we highly recommend you read the full list in the trip cancellation and trip interruption section of the Sapphire Preferred Benefits Guide and Sapphire Reserve Guide to Benefits.
How To File a Claim
To file a claim, you must contact the Benefit Administrator at 888-320-9961 within 20 days of the incident.
You will be asked a handful of questions so the administrator can send you the correct forms. After this, you'll need to gather the necessary documents to send in. Some documents that may be required are:
- Completed claim form.
- Copy of the travel itinerary.
- Confirmation of the reason for the trip cancellation or trip interruption — for example, medical documents, death certificate, or other documentation supporting a covered loss.
- Copy of the credit card statement showing the charge for prepaid travel arrangements for trip cancellation.
- Proof of expenses incurred due to a trip interruption.
- Copy of the cancellation or refund policies of the common carrier, tour operator, or travel supplier.
You can submit them to the following address:
Plan Administrator
Card Benefit Services
P.O. Box 72034
Richmond, VA 23255
You have 90 days (or a reasonable amount of time, no longer than one year) to submit your supporting documents. Details can be found in the claim information section of the benefits guide.
You can also file a claim online at www.eclaimsline.com.
Ink Business Preferred® Credit Card Trip Cancellation and Trip Interruption
The Sapphire Preferred and Sapphire Reserve are not the only Chase cards with trip cancellation and trip interruption insurance. The trip interruption and cancellation insurance offered by the Ink Preferred will cover up to $5,000 per person and $10,000 per trip in prepaid or non-refundable travel expenses if a trip is canceled or cut short by a covered situation as per the Ink Preferred Benefits Guide (warning: PDF). Note that there is a $20,000 maximum per 12-month period.
The policy covers the cardholder, immediate family members, and employees of the company for which the Ink Preferred account is issued. It also covers trips purchased using Ultimate Rewards points from the account, which will be reimbursed at 1 cent per point.
Related: Best Credit Cards With Free Travel Insurance
Final Thoughts
We know it feels like a lot to take in, but understanding how the benefits work, what’s covered, and the claims process can save you thousands of dollars and a major headache down the road.
By understanding the Chase Sapphire trip cancellation and trip interruption insurance on your Sapphire Preferred or Sapphire Reserve, you may find that you're already covered without the need to spend anything extra on third-party insurance.
To learn more about these cards, check out our full Chase Sapphire Reserve review and Chase Sapphire Preferred review.
For rates and fees of the cards mentioned in this post, please visit the following links: Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card (Rates & Fees), and Chase Sapphire Reserve® (Rates & Fees)
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