If a fight is cancelled, does any travel insurance cover lost hotels?
Posted by Impressionsoflakes@reddit | AskUK | View on Reddit | 13 comments
We're going to Italy in the Summer for a few days and have booked the flights with Easyjet.
But I'm hearing of airlines potentially cancelling flights due to fuel shortages thanks to the Iran conflict.
Does any UK travel insurance policy cover lost, but prepaid, hotel bookings due to flight cancellation?
I've drilled down into the small print of a few policies and it seems abandonment/cancellation is only covered due to bad weather and strikes - as opposed to the airline pulling the flight due to their own operational decisions.
RecentTwo544@reddit
FWIW - there is little chance flights you've actually booked will be cancelled, so I've read. They're pulling some routes but only unsold ones. So if you're booked, you'll be fine.
That said, the best way around this is what I tend to do anyway - book a hotel where you pay on arrival/check out, which is how hotels worked for centuries, or where you pay up front but have the option to cancel with more than 24 hours notice.
Or, really go native and just book a hotel when you arrive.
Obviously I realise this gung-ho style of planning isn't really possible if you've got kids.
As others have said, travel insurance generally won't cover this as the Iran war was ongoing when you booked.
markvauxhall@reddit
It's unlikely there are any flights scheduled in Europe this summer that have sold zero tickets.
Where flight cancellations are needed, they will be prioritised on those routes with proportionally lower numbers of tickets sold and / or where airlines operate multiple flights a day and can consolidate them.
I think generally it's a low risk of OP's flight being cancelled. But it's not zero risk, so they're right to be mindful of what happens to their hotel booking.
tfm992@reddit
The airline I work for is just under 50% sold for the rest of the summer (this is NOT inside information and was in a press release).
Naturally, most of the sooner flights are a lot more sold currently than the ones in September and October, but passengers are booking later compared to last year in general.
Gullible-Try-3440@reddit
The wording from my policy (Southdowns Silver Plus Gadget, annual policy) would suggest that this is NOT one of the conditions covered by the cancellation policy. I'd imagine most policies have similar wording.
As others have said, almost every insurer will have an exception for war. I'm not a lawyer, but it would be interesting to see whether a court agrees that fuel shortage can come under that exemption (I know it's the root cause, but it's not the direct cause).
Technically anything is insurable if you look hard enough, but you'd need a specialist, custom policy. I imagine this would be prohibitively expensive.
spectrumero@reddit
I suspect the risk of cancellation is low, but if you want to be sure, book all the hotels etc. in a way that is refundable (many hotels give a discount for non-refundable bookings, but the discount is usually quite small - so it may be worth you just hedging your bets to get a refundable booking. In my experience most hotels give a refund so long as the cancellation is >48hrs in advance - the airlines are highly unlikely to cancel flights at this short notice).
markvauxhall@reddit
AFAIK the only way to really protect against this is to book a package holiday (e.g. BA Holiday / EasyJet Holiday) as if the flights are rescheduled they also have to sort out your accommodation- or if they can't, they have to give you a full refund.
Worth nothing though that generally where airlines are making these operational decisions they are giving at least 14 days notice, as this means they don't have to give compensation for delays - just refund / rebooking. So if you have a refundable Airbnb / hotel with a cancellation policy of less than 14 days you should be fine. Most hotels will offer refundable rates with a 24-72 hour cancellation window (albeit at a higher price than nonrefundable).
Impressionsoflakes@reddit (OP)
Oh thank you, that's very helpful
PipBin@reddit
It’s also worth knowing that if you book both the flights and accommodation through one site, like Expedia then that is classed as a package and you are ABTOL protected.
tfm992@reddit
Just to be clear (and I know it's a typo), it's ATOL. ABTA is a private membership organisation with no additional legal rights, ATOL is run by the CAA, which is a government agency.
This may, in some cases, be a Linked Travel Arrangement through third party sites, which will further complicate things. The Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements Regulations 2018 are the relevant legislation and this is freely available online.
The airline I work for (which isn't Easyjet) doesn't anticipate any fuel shortages over the summer season.
PipBin@reddit
It was a typo and I got the two confused.
Glass_Minute4753@reddit
I looked into this a few weeks ago and I'm honestly not sure any policy would cover you if your flights were cancelled due to the situation in Iran. If you look at the small print, every policy I looked at had something in there about not covering events that were known about or foreseeable at the time you purchased the policy. We're going to France this summer and have opted to travel by train.
Katena789@reddit
If you've already paid for the holiday, but not bought insurance, there may be exclusions around this - basically to stop people buying insurance just for when they become aware that they will likely need to claim on it!
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