Travel sick Over cash snub
Latest air ban leaves passenger out of Pocket for trip to west Africa.. what are his rights?
QPLEASE could you advise me? In early December I booked a flight for a short break to Senegal. I was going with a friend who has family there. He was going for three weeks while I was just having eight days. Since booking the flight the rules regarding Covid and travel have changed considerably. It is now illegal to leave the UK unless it is absolutely essential. Now you have to have a negative test no longer than 72 hours before returning to the country. Bearing in mind these changes it feels as though I would be breaking the law by going to Senegal and also putting myself at risk of not being able to return within the time limits. Thus, it would be very unwise to travel. I have tried speaking to my travel company and the airline involved and had emails with the insurance company who I bought special insurance with and they are all saying If I don’t break the law and travel, I will have to lose my money.
I’LL start this one with good news, and that is that after I spoke with the airline and the travel company, they both agreed
that while they couldn’t refund your money they were happy to allow you to roll over the money you paid until you could fly later on this year.
As you can imagine I’ve had lots of emails about cancelled holidays in recent weeks and I’ll cover some of them over the next few weeks, hopefully looking at different aspects of the rules and when you should and shouldn’t expect a refund.
But for this week I want to concentrate on the insurance aspects of the trip since you were told in no uncertain terms by your insurers that you wouldn’t be covered. Before I do that, however, it’s worth mentioning one other issue. Airlines these days sell lots of different types of tickets. Some you can change or obtain a refund, others you can’t.
Sometimes it’s worth paying a bit more money for a more flexible ticket so you can make changes to your flights if circumstances develop.
I’ve copied below some of the exclusions listed in the terms and conditions of the policy you bought:
“We do not refund for any reason associated with a communicable disease pandemic
or epidemic, including Covid-19.
“We do not refund if your booking is no longer wanted or needed. Where the restriction of movement is as a result of measure to control the spread of Covid 19 or any other pandemic.
“Where your government has issued a travel advisory or warning but not a ban to the country where the booing is located.
“Where you made a booking after the government travel ban was already in force or was reasonably foreseeable.”
You’ll see from all of these comments that it is quite clear that there would be no cover provided in the situation you faced, where the flights were going ahead but you had decided not to travel because you didn’t feel safe.
In fact all claims relating to problems due to Covid will not be covered, and this is a clause that many insurers inserted into polices at this time last year.
The last statement is, to my mind, a bit vague. What does ‘reasonably foreseeable’ mean?
Should you have been aware, in early December, that restrictions were likely, and if so should that have meant that you should have known that your insurance wasn’t going to cover you in the event that you didn’t travel? Insurance covers so many other aspects of a trip that I’m not for a moment suggesting that you shouldn’t have bought it because then you wouldn’t have cover for belongings or illness or travel money for example.
The important thing is that we all read the terms and conditions of our polices before we pay for them so that we have a reasonable understanding of what cover we have and when we will be able to make a claim.
The section headed “terms and conditions” is the one that we normally gloss over. We shouldn’t.