Travel Insurer refusing claim - am I being unreasonable ?!?!

TennisFan

Hi - I'm looking for some views as to whether I'm being reasonable or not !,
I'm trying to claim additional flight costs from my travel insurance company following a cancelled flight - said flight was from Munich to Tokyo and was cancelled by Lufthansa due to a strike at Munich airport on the date of travel (strike was by ground staff not Lufthansa staff).
As  two elderly travellers  (74 and 69, one with diagnosed high BP and the other with a recent TIA (both declared to our insurers)) we had booked a flight from Manchester to Munich with an overnight stay in Munich and then a direct flight from Munich to Tokyo in order to avoid the stress of transfers mid journey. 
 Lufthansa cancelled our Munich/Tokyo flight a day and a half prior to departure and then a couple of hours later offered an alternative which involved routing via Munich to Frankfurt (1 hour xfer time to next flight) and then Air China to Beijing (2 hour xfer) and finally Air Nippon to Tokyo which would have arrived in Tokyo over 3 hours later than the original routing. 
In the mean time our travel company recommended booking on an alternative flight direct from Manchester (via Hong Kong), but which would cost an additional £500 each way. Given the uncertainty of flying in and out of Munich airport and the multiple transfers suggested by Lufthansa  we opted for the travel agents suggested alternative.
The travel Insurers have turned down my claim for the additional flight costs on the grounds that Lufthansa offered alternative routing. 
So, am I being unreasonable to expect the travel insurers to cover the additional costs? Was the alternative routing offered by Lufthansa reasonable in the circumstances?
Thank you for your thoughts.

DE_612183

if the alternative was only 3 hours difference I don't think you can expect them to pay if didn't like that option - I understand that it may not have been as convenient for you but that's not what you insured for

DullGreyGuy

TennisFan said:

Hi - I'm looking for some views as to whether I'm being reasonable or not !,
I'm trying to claim additional flight costs from my travel insurance company following a cancelled flight - said flight was from Munich to Tokyo and was cancelled by Lufthansa due to a strike at Munich airport on the date of travel (strike was by ground staff not Lufthansa staff).
As  two elderly travellers  (74 and 69, one with diagnosed high BP and the other with a recent TIA (both declared to our insurers)) we had booked a flight from Manchester to Munich with an overnight stay in Munich and then a direct flight from Munich to Tokyo in order to avoid the stress of transfers mid journey. 
 Lufthansa cancelled our Munich/Tokyo flight a day and a half prior to departure and then a couple of hours later offered an alternative which involved routing via Munich to Frankfurt (1 hour xfer time to next flight) and then Air China to Beijing (2 hour xfer) and finally Air Nippon to Tokyo which would have arrived in Tokyo over 3 hours later than the original routing. 
In the mean time our travel company recommended booking on an alternative flight direct from Manchester (via Hong Kong), but which would cost an additional £500 each way. Given the uncertainty of flying in and out of Munich airport and the multiple transfers suggested by Lufthansa  we opted for the travel agents suggested alternative.
The travel Insurers have turned down my claim for the additional flight costs on the grounds that Lufthansa offered alternative routing. 
So, am I being unreasonable to expect the travel insurers to cover the additional costs? Was the alternative routing offered by Lufthansa reasonable in the circumstances?
Thank you for your thoughts.

Why didnt your travel agents deal with this via Lufthansa? When our travel was disrupted the night before a flight the agent got Air France to agree to pay for a British Airways flight for us so even though it was £200 more we didnt pay a penny. 

TennisFan

Thanks for the comments. The travel agent did deal with Lufthansa, but they and we weren't happy with Lufthansa's suggested rerouting and Lufthansa wouldn't pay for alternative flights.
I  understand why the travel insurance company thought we should have taken Lufthansa's suggested rerouting, but faced with flying from an airport where ground staff were on strike, transfers at two airports, using airlines we'd never flown with before we just felt the risk of something going wrong was too great. As it happened had we travelled back with Lufthansa as planned we'd have got stuck in a second strike at Munich airport on the day of our return !!  I guess travel insurers have to draw the line somewhere, but it did feel that we were in the sort of exceptional situation insurance would/should cover.