You’d think that your holiday travel insurance would cover airline failures. Surprisingly most of them don’t. Why should we be punished for the failure of airline companies?
Three in four travel insurance policies don’t cover scheduled airline failures (just a fancy name for an airline going bust), so says Defaqto.
It’s a surprising and worrying statistic if you, like most of us, want to be protected from anything that gets in the way of your precious holiday destination.
In our own research, we found a slightly higher percentage of insurers (41%) covering airline failure – with more offering it for an extra premium. But this still isn’t good enough.
When we asked why this cover wasn’t included as standard in most policies, the Association of British Insurers told us that the purpose of insurance was to cover people for their personal circumstances and not economic failures.
Hmm, I’d argue that an airline going bust does have quite a significant impact on an individual’s holiday circumstances and should be something that’s included as standard.
When we investigated insurance policies in more detail, Which? Holiday also found a number of other common exclusions. These ranged from the ordinary, like missing your flight because of traffic jams – to the extraordinary, such as not being covered if you’re caught up in a terrorist attack.
Let’s face it, none of us wants to read the small print in these policies – it’s boring. But, if exclusions like these mean that we have to pay more, or miss out on our holiday altogether, insurance companies must do more to inform us about them.
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