Province
CREDIT: The Canadian Press
Chaos at Toronto’s Pearson airport last Tuesday.
TORONTO — Summertime is travel time for many Canadians, but sometimes even the best-laid plans can fly out the window, causing you to cancel or cut short a trip.
Last week’s crash of an Air France plane at Pearson International Airport is evidence that when things go wrong, they go wrong in a hurry.
Thankfully all survived this episode, but the resulting turmoil left thousands of passengers scrambling, right across the country.
Cancellation insurance may reduce the financial hit of an unforeseen crisis, such as a terrorist attack, hurricane or major illness, but experts advise travellers to know their options.
Stan Seggie, president of RBC Travel Insurance Co., says that his company sells trip cancellation and trip interruption insurance covering 42 types of risk that include medical emergencies, pregnancy, death, unemployment, some airline foulups and government travel advisories.
“It covers the vast majority of things that can happen,” Seggie says.
However, it’s important to know the terms and conditions of cancellation and interruption policies, he adds.
For example, RBC requires that a traveller claiming cancellation coverage must have cancelled the trip within one business day of the cause of the cancellation, and must at the same time have notified RBC.
Usually travellers should go over the insurance coverage at the time the trip is booked.
There are limits to what you can expect.
If your destination is hit by a disaster like a hurricane or an act of terrorism, you will likely be covered — but not if the event is regarded as too minor or too distant from where you’re going.
One factor to consider is whether the Canadian government has issued a travel warning for the area.
Check out the federal website www.voyage.gc.ca, which includes travel warnings about various parts of the world.
Seggie says cancellation insurance is designed to compensate travellers for things that are beyond their control, rather than simply a change of mind, in order to keep the premiums affordable.
RBC Travel Insurance, part of the group that owns the Royal Bank of Canada, writes about three million policies annually — half for trip cancellation or interruption and half for out-of-country medical coverage.
The average premium is about $75 to $80, Seggie says, but an individual’s premium will depend on age and the value of the trip being insured.
Laura Cooke, a spokeswoman for Air Canada, agrees that cancellation insurance often makes a lot of sense.
However, she notes that in times of crisis the airline may relax restrictions on its tickets — allowing travellers to rebook flights for a later time, after the danger has passed.
“It’s going to depend on the incident and the severity of the incident,” Cooke says.
In addition, some airline tickets may be refundable even in normal circumstances, while others are not, and travellers should take that into consideration when comparing fares and booking flights.
Cooke says: “The deeply discounted fares tend to come with more restrictions.”
© The Vancouver Province 2005