Covid19 and Airline Cancellations

Judith_Chalmers

As of 17th March 2020 the FCO has now advised against all but essential travel to ALL overseas destinations.

We have booked with EasyJet to travel to Amsterdam between 31/03/2020 - 03/04/2020 and I fully expected that after this announcement we would have been contacted by EJ cancelling our flight in line with this new instruction - to date this has not happened and watching Martin on ITV last night he advised claiming on travel insurance to make a cancellation claim.

My question is this: Why ? do we have to claim on our insurance policies if the borders are closed why aren’t ALL airline companies now making cancellations themselves and making it easier for people to obtain a full refund.  

EasyJet’s own website has a link to CV19 updates for each country and on this it confirms the “ The Dutch authorities have introduced a number of restrictive measures, this includes the full closure of all bars and restaurants etc etc and they will also isolate travellers from outside of the Netherlands”  this means if EJ don’t cancel the flight they will still be flying their (prior to asking this question I have checked and EJ have flown into Amsterdam from Liverpool Airport today).
 It  does not make any sense to me 🤷‍♀️ I really need to understand why ALL  flights haven’t been cancelled as part of this new FCO instruction and people are being forced into claiming under their insurance policy.
Does anyone out their know the answer to this, I cannot be the only person in this limbo scratching their heads asking WHY? 

Caz3121

a lot can happen in the next 11 days....currently many airlines are still transporting people home....the flight today may have had Dutch passengers getting back to Netherlands and bringing back Brits to the UK.
Airlines are in a position that they cannot win, they cancel all flights and the Daily Mail gets filled up with sad faces on how passengers have been abandoned overseas with no way to get home....I would suspect there will be further cancellations next week 

Judith_Chalmers

Hi Caz 3121.  Thanks for your reply, that make sense, I did think about people having to get home vice versa and thought that if they cancelled it stops people other than those who need recovery flights (they do speak of recovery flights on their flight information section) but my head was saying if their still flying then nobody needs recovering- if ya catch ma drift 
I can imagine the DM readers sad/angry faces about how people had been ‘abandoned’ thanks again and take care 👍🏻