My flight’s been cancelled by volcanic ash – will my insurance cover me?
No Iceland, we said cash…
Unless you’ve just come back from a stay on Mars, it won’t have escaped your notice that air traffic in large parts of Western Europe has ground to a halt because of large quantities of ash being spewed out by a volcano called Eyjafjallajokull (yes, that’s it’s name) in Iceland.
Volcanic ash is extremely dangerous once it gets into contact with aircraft engines. In 1982 a British Airways plane had a lucky escape on a flight from London to Auckland when flying over Mount Galunggung in Indonesia. Ash got into its engines and all four failed. On the free fall that followed, the crew was able to get one of the engines going again because the air flow had dislodged some of the ash and some very frightened passengers made it to Jakarta. This is why northern European airspace has come to a halt – its dangerous.
What should I do now then?
The first port of call if your flight is cancelled or delayed is your airline. They have to offer alternative flights or refunds if you can’t fly. Watch the situation very closely however as it is changing almost by the hour.
You probably won’t be entitled to compensation as although European law says you are eligible under “exceptional circumstances” the airlines will quite reasonably argue that these circumstances couldn’t exactly have been prevented or anticipated.
This rare situation comes under what is called an Act of God. Insurance companies have trouble sometimes reacting in a standardised way to these things and this is no exception.
World First Travel insurance will be paying out
When the story was starting to break yesterday, World First’s Managing Partner Martin Rothwell, was at a meeting of the association of Travel Insurance Intermediaries http://www.atii.co.uk/ and that they were in immediate contact with the underwriters, http://www.ptic.gi/ to clarify the situation.
World First have said that if you are delayed for over 12 hours because your flight has been cancelled due to this problem, you can claim Travel Delay. You can then claim Abandonment if you are delayed for more than 24 hours in any alternative travel arrangements offered to you.
You will need to prove that your flight was cancelled for that length of time when claiming as flights will start to resume when the airspace ban is lifted. We would not expect people to go to the airport where flights cancelled or the airport is closed. Cutting through the technical jargon, you’re covered.
And so are some, but not all, of the others
RBS have said the passengers that bought insurance through Direct Line, Churchill, NatWest and RBS will be able to make a claim for accommodation that cannot be cancelled or used as long as they have written evidence to support it.
Saga have also said it will honour claims subject to customers getting a letter from their airline to say that their flight was cancelled to to the weather.
Aviva however have said that they will not be accepting any claims. A rather terse statement says “Cancellation or abandonment of your holiday covers specific events only, such as injury, illness, death of the person insured or their travelling companion/a relative, redundancy or damage to your home by fire, flood or storm. There is therefore no cover for cancellation as a result of this incident.” So that’s that then.
What if I haven’t got insurance?
It goes without saying that it’s too late now. You can’t buy insurance against a problem that you already know exists. To put it quite bluntly, you’ll know better next time. This just shows the point of buying insurance. It doesn’t cost very much, especially if you go away a few times a year and you get an annual policy and it could have you a pretty packet.
Related posts:
- What do I do if my British Airways flight is delayed or cancelled?
- Your travel insurance policy will cover you for Icelandic ash
- Confused.com? Ash, strikes and travel insurance
- Travel, ash and strikes
- Worried about volcanic ash? Don’t blow your top.
Tags: Ash, BA, British Airways, Eyjafjallajokull, Iceland
April 17th, 2010 at 12:06 pm
Hi – My flight from Brisbane to Glasgow has been cancelled and I am stranded here till the next available flight which I have been informed is on 2nd May – my insurance is due to expire this evening – as I thought I would be home – will it be extended automaticall?? I’ve tried to call them but have been told they’re closed and to call back on Monday!!
My other problem is I am a student and I will now be missing over 2 weeks of my studies – this will affect my grant – what can I do about this – can someone advise please – all I want is to get home.
April 17th, 2010 at 3:39 pm
So what happens if the policy expires while you are overseas and your support department is so inundated with calls nobody can get through to amend policies?
April 17th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
I was informed by Insure and Go on Thursday that my Annual Family Gold (most expensive) policy would cover my cancelled flight, hotel etc under ‘holiday abandonment’. However when I called on Saturday they said that the underwriter Europ Assistance Holding Irish branch had reneged on this decision. the cowards! Can I take this further?
April 19th, 2010 at 3:51 pm
[...] Partners « My flight’s been cancelled by volcanic ash – will my insurance cover me? [...]
April 19th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
If your cover is with World First then your policy will be automatically extended for the period of the delay until you are able to return home and without charge – this should be the case will most companies who have stated they will cover the scenario. However, if you are insured with a company (such as Mondial or AXA) who is refusing to cover claims arising from Volcanic Ash then you could find that you have no automatic extension to the travel insurance you purchased. We recommend you contact your insurers immediately to extend the policy by payment of an additional premium.
April 20th, 2010 at 11:17 am
re: Susan Roberts. I completely sympathise. I had exactly the same conversaion with them on Friday as I expected to have my holiday cancelled. I was assured I was covered yet when my cancellation eventually came through on Saturday and I rang Insure and Go up to claim I was told the their underwriters Europ Assistance have now instructed them not to cover anyone for this incident. Friday it was yes you are covered as its adverse weather, Saturday, no you are not as its volcanic. Both companies are a disgrace. So the advice of “check with your travel insurance provider” that seems to be banded around by the “professionals” is rubbish as the unscrupulous ones, Insure and Go and Europ Assistance in this case, seem to be able to move the goal posts at will. Any excuse to avoid paying out.
April 20th, 2010 at 12:01 pm
My airline says I’m stuck in Florida for at least another week. Your policy offers £100 total! A gesture I suppose, but you can’t go around hinting in your blog that you’re covering people stuck abroad when you don’t really cover the cost.
April 26th, 2010 at 10:38 am
[...] addition to all that of course, at the time of writing, almost 3,000 British travellers are stranded at the airport. That’s the subject of another [...]
April 29th, 2010 at 9:36 pm
John, I think you may have missed the detail when reading about our stance on travel insurance cover for Volcanic Ash. If you read the full post you will see that we have stated what the cover is. Yes, the travel delay benefit is the same as most policies on the market and is limited to £100 per person, but we are also covering cancellation of trips people had booked but could not go on and the sum insured in that respect os £3,000 per person. We also extended all client insurance without question for the period of any delay and finally have been involved in a number of emergency cases to help more medically impaired clients who were running out of critical medications. Going back to the travel delay benefit, this is designed as emergency compensation and really just to cover costs for a day. Nobody ever envisaged such a situation as has recently taken place to last for so long and I am sure we will be making changes to our policy cover in the future. Incidentaly, if you were flying with an EU registered airline then they are obliged to provide accommodation and food for the period of the delay in any case.
August 18th, 2010 at 1:15 pm
[...] been a lot of cases recently in the news of airlines going bust, strikes and disruption caused by volcanic ash. You have to be sure that you are covered for travel delay and abandonment for example or you could [...]