Do you need travel insurance to cover your redemption ticket?

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• Tracy says:

  7 Dec7 December 06:45

  It isn’t just the 24 hours before your flight. Travel insurance would cover you if you needed to fly home at a different time or had a medical issue whilst abroad.

• fiona says:

  7 Dec7 December 06:53

  Insurance isn’t just about your initial flight. I am surprised why people would even ask.

  • Nick_C says:

    7 Dec7 December 07:04

    It’s a valid question.

    If my annual policy has lapsed, I usual take out insurance as soon as I book anything.

    But I’m planning a trip next June. So far, the only thing I have booked is a redemption flight. Until I actually book anything that is non refundable, there is no point taking out insurance. If all the hotel bookings that I make are refundable, then I’ll leave insurance to the last minute.

    • Adam says:

      7 Dec7 December 07:19

      It comes into use when you have a complicated itinerary with long stopovers using Avios. To offer a simple example if you was to book as follows maybe to get a first segment on before a voucher expires

      01JAN MAN-LHR
      10APR LHR-MIA
      20APR MIA-LHR

      Then once the first segment is flown the remaining flights become non refundable and non changeable therefore making an insurance covering frequent flyer points a must.

      Tesco travel insurance also offers cover for miles used on redemption flights although they don’t offer any refund but will rebook identical flights for you within three months of your original flights.

      • Polly says:

        7 Dec7 December 07:37

        That’s useful to know about tesco.,imagine you had an F BA 241 to HKG return, would they really book an equivalent F seat for you within 3 mths. That would be super amazing.

        Injuries CAN happen within the 24 hr window, unfortunately. My OH did his back in the morning we were flying BA F using our 241 to HKG that night. He ended up sitting almost forward the whole flight. Wheelchaired around the Bali resort for 3/52 by tiny me! Pool helped tho. Now he is banned from playing sports within 48 hrs of any LH departure. Just in case!
        Would our Plat insurance refund the cost of our miles, l wonder, then we could re purchase them in a sale or whatever?

        • Reddot says:

          7 Dec7 December 07:45

          My OH managed to crack his ribs at work and we were just saying that the silver lining is that we weren’t flying out to Singapore for precisely the same reason. I think your ban is well-justified !

        • mark2 says:

          7 Dec7 December 08:00

          On our trip to Canada last year we almost missed our flights.
          Because we were flying in the afternoon we decided to drive down (about 100 miles) rather than stay the night. There had been a big pile up on the M40 and we had to leave when we were warned on the matrix signs. We were delayed in leaving when our niece came round for a shower just as we were leaving (her bathroom was being refurbished). If we had left at the planned time we could have been stuck between junctions for hours or even been involved in the accident.
          This is why I cannot understand the purpose of checking in online when not at the airport.

• Phil says:

  7 Dec7 December 07:15

  Are Avios bookings from IberiaPlus refundable? ISTR that they aren’t – in which case one might want to insure those bookings.

  • Rob says:

    7 Dec7 December 08:15

    BA flights are now refundable, but not other oneworld partners.

    • Nick says:

      7 Dec7 December 14:40

      Rob, do you get the Avios and taxes £17.50/£25.00 refunded or just the Avios in cancelling a RFS with BA?

      • Genghis says:

        7 Dec7 December 15:37

        Just the avios

      • Rob says:

        7 Dec7 December 16:51

        Just the Avios due to the fee of ‘£35 or taxes, whichever is lower’.

• mark2 says:

  7 Dec7 December 07:27

  I think that travel insurance is an area where we could usefully share experiences. I have only travelled on holiday a couple of times a year and have been fortunate to have never had to claim. I always wonder how I would claim if one or both of our cases went missing. Should me make a list of the contents before we leave home? I cannot believe that many people do this. Also our clothes have been accumulated over many years, often on holiday in Italy or Canada and I never keep receipts. Do the insurance company accept an estimate? Has anyone had to do this?

  • Polly says:

    7 Dec7 December 07:44

    Might be useful to pay by card, from now on when clothes shopping, even abroad. As when our cases were destroyed by rain, left out in rain on Tarmac in LGW one time, the insurance accepted our bank receipts for shopping ie Topshop, River Island, Laura Ashley etc. They just deducted 10% for every year of age from the date. Got quite a lot back from them, enough to replace the detroyed clothing.

    • mark2 says:

      7 Dec7 December 08:04

      Thanks Polly. As you would expect I do pay for everything by card but often not in an exclusively cloths shop e.g, John Lewis, TK Maxx.

      • mark2 says:

        7 Dec7 December 09:06

        Oh No!!
        I mis-wrote( as Hillary would say) ‘cloths’ instead of ‘clothes’..
        This was completely accidental and I deeply apologise.

      • Andrew says:

        7 Dec7 December 09:26

        Although if you bought in John Lewis, and swiped your loyalty card, a copy of all your receipts are stored in your digital wallet.

  • HAM76 says:

    9 Dec9 December 08:22

    I have scans of my personal receipts going back 20 years. I realize I was an exception back then, but these days, scanners as part of a printer are cheap starting at £30. £50 gets you a stand-alone printer-scanner combination that lets you insert a memory card. Just scan receipts when you are next to the scanner, let the scanner store the scan on the card and very occasionally file the card and swap with an empty one. No need to look at the scans or organize them until you have to claim. Total effort a few seconds per receipt.

    If you aren’t concerned about privacy issues, you can pay a little more and get a cloud connected scanner. Scan straight to the internet and gives you access to all receipts even while you are traveling.

• Mike says:

  7 Dec7 December 07:35

  I would certainly appreciate an article on travel insurance

• Dave R says:

  7 Dec7 December 07:52

  For anyone thinking of using Avios travel insurance… I was planning to use them for a F trip to NYC last summer but they told me that, although they do cover Avios bookings, this is only for bookings via Avios.com and not BAEC.

  • Dave R says:

    7 Dec7 December 07:53

    (Specifically the avios points element)

• Choons says:

  7 Dec7 December 07:57

  I used Columbus Direct. I just hoped they would cover things if anything happened.

• Boi says:

  7 Dec7 December 08:03

  I am in that trap….I might pay for not reading the T&C’s fully. I thought my hotel booking will be automatically covered by Amex platinum travel insurance as I used the card to book it-I paid for the redemption flights with a virgin black as I was going to earn more FC miles with that. Unfortunately I had to cancel the trip, The flight part is ok BUT Amex have said for me to claim for the hotel booking the whole holiday needs to have been paid on the card.
  Thanks, Rob, I think this is an important topic. I may have been stung by the rules….

  • Genghis says:

    7 Dec7 December 08:57

    Have you gone back to Amex with the terms I quoted yesterday?

    • mark2 says:

      7 Dec7 December 09:11

      Thanks for that quote yesterday. It was interesting to see that the limited travel insurance from using an Amex card included those issued by other banks and that it also applies when the card is used to pay the charges on a points redemption.

    • Boi says:

      7 Dec7 December 19:32

      Waiting for medical certificate from GP then I will go back to them once I have it.

      Thanks for the quote….even a slim chance is better than nothing. She made it sound like it’s set in stone.

      Normally we have separate travel insurance but this time stuck to Amex…..then this happens. Never claimed before

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