Travel insurance: No FCO restriction but no flights?

silvercar

(Posting for a friend)

I know that generally travel insurance kicks in if FCO advise not to travel, but what happens if the airlines decide that they will cancel flights but the FCO don't advise against travel?

Airline cancelled all flights to their destination yesterday and today; they are offering to rebook flights, but will probably be a few days before they can get seats on a flight. Hotel booked separately.

FCO advise is to take care/ heed warnings/ avoid known trouble spots etc but hasn't said not to travel.

So my question is whether travel insurance should pay for the lost days in the hotel or not?

CKhalvashi

If it's to/from the EU and with an EU airline, then automatic cover will step in from the airline.

If outside the EU and airline have cancelled, then there should be no reason why a claim wouldn't be valid with the insurance company.

My travel insurance got us back home in 2008, as the airline we were travelling with (S7, so non-EU) had cancelled all flights to/from Tbilisi. We ended up (if memory serves me right) with Armavia from Yerevan to Istanbul, then Turkish to Heathrow, rather than stopping in Moscow and jumping on a BA plane.

silvercar

From the UK, on an EU airline, to outside the EU.

So should the airline pay the costs of the hotel for the days that they wouldn't have been able to get there and extra costs of being stuck in the UK for the first 4 days of their holiday?

Or would some of that liability fall to travel insurance?

DomRavioli

That would be the liability of travel insurance, although you could chase them through the small claims court to fight your case. It is exactly what travel insurance is for.