Casting to custom player controller fails after server travel (seamless)

I have a trigger box setup and trying to cast other actor (from overlap event) to my custom player controller to trigger a level change…
I am doing this after changing levels using servertravel.
This works fine from level 1 to level 2 but cast fails on trigger from level 2 to level 3.
I have also noticed in the log that I get a “ActorChannelFailure [UChannel]”
I am not sure what that means but I think it is the reason for the player controller being messed up.
Any help would be appreciated.

My bad, apparently variables on player controller do not survive on player controllers after server travel. I was trying to access a variable in the controller, hence the cast was failing.
Moved the variable to gameinstance.