Will we be able to get coronavirus insurance for holidays?

Q You mention your “five tests” that must be passed before any of us can go abroad. But surely you’ve missed out number six: how can we even consider travelling abroad when no insurance company will provide cover for Covid-19?

Shaney T

A Allow me briefly to restate the five tests that must be passed before any of us can travel overseas for fun.

1 Has lockdown been eased enough to allow you to reach the UK airport, ferry port or international rail station?

2 Has the Foreign Office lifted its warning against all overseas traveI?

3 Is there an airline prepared to take you?

4 Will the destination country let you in?

5 Can you tolerate self-isolating on your return?

Of these, three and four are looking positive, while five is of course your choice. But that is immaterial while the domestic lockdown obligations prevent you or I reaching the departure location. And while the Foreign Office still has its blanket warning in place, travel insurance is invalidated if you go abroad.

I am lobbying the FCO to refine its advice as travel restrictions get lifted abroad, but without success so far. However, let’s assume that within the next few weeks domestic leisure travel becomes possible and that at least some European destinations are removed from the Foreign Office “no-go” list.

At present, any trips that go ahead where insurance was purchased before mid-March should be covered for problems arising from coronavirus. This generally includes annual policies that are due to expire before the holiday, so long as the policy is renewed to provide you with continuous cover.

For fresh trips, travel insurance is still available – but many firms are excluding claims arising from, or related to, Covid-19 (or any subsequent mutations) on new policies.

Now, there are two kinds of claims that are relevant. One is for cancellations caused as a result of coronavirus. This might be, for example, a non-cancellable hotel that you cannot reach because of Covid-19-related travel restrictions. I cannot find any insurer that will accept that risk.

But a more significant risk is for emergency medical treatment (and possible repatriation) if you become symptomatic with coronavirus during your trip. Policies covering this are beginning to appear, with Staysure claiming to be ahead of the pack. The company claims it will cover you for catching the virus during your insured trip.

I suggest, though, that you postpone any travel purchase until the UK government says what it will do about Foreign Office advice and the quarantine rules. But as soon as you buy a trip, take out insurance at the same time.

Q I have two trips booked for June that are unravelling as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. I am due to travel from Luton to Krakow on 5 June with Ryanair, and return on the same route but with easyJet on 7 June.

Ryanair has cancelled the flight so I have filled out a short form asking for a refund. But easyJet has not notified me if the flight is going ahead or not. In addition I was due to travel from Bristol to Rome on easyJet on 18 June for a Euro 2020 match, returning on 22 June. Do you think that these flights will be cancelled? I obviously want a refund as the football has been cancelled for this year.

Name supplied

A I can understand that it is very annoying that one airline has cancelled, but not the other. For future reference, this is a rather-too-frequent pitfall when you choose to fly outbound with one carrier and back with another; the non-cancelling airline is uninterested in refunding you just because its rival could not fly you.

Fortunately I can guarantee that all your easyJet flights will be cancelled. According to my experience (based on being due to fly from Amsterdam to Luton today) you can expect an email confirmation of the first easyJet cancellation any day now. I was officially informed of mine about 10 days ago.

The airline is fully grounded for the first half of June, and while easyJet is launching a limited number of domestic flights on 15 June, the airline will certainly not be flying between Bristol and Rome before July. So you can safely assume that the Italian flights will be cancelled too, but you will need to wait a couple more weeks before that is confirmed and you can begin the refund/rebook/voucher process.

For all flights, I suggest you choose between a cash refund (though this will take weeks) or, if you are convinced you will be on easyJet in the next year, vouchers; I opted to accept a £5 bonus per flight, partly because it was a lot easier but mostly because I frankly can’t wait to fly on easyJet (or indeed any airline at all), and will be spending enthusiastically on air travel as soon as I can.

Q My Danish partner recently visited her 94-year-old mum in Denmark. The airline cancelled her return flight and the only way I could get her home was by Lufthansa with a stopover in Frankfurt. It cost 10 times as much as the original flight.

Apparently the airline is not liable, and I'm still waiting for my travel insurance company (we have an annual policy) to decide whether it will cover the cost. Is it really the case that when you book a flight or a holiday anywhere, you might have to pay your costs home yourself?

Jeff P

A I would be very surprised if your travel insurer agrees to meet the deficit between the original fare and the amount you paid. Fortunately, the European air passenger rights regulations (in force in the UK until the end of the year, at least) mean that it is clear that the cancelling airline owes you the money.

While these have been extremely challenging times for all carriers, the rules for airlines cancelling flights remain exactly the same. As soon as the cancellation is known, the carrier assumes responsibility for providing the passenger with the best possible alternative flight – as well as meals and accommodation, if those become necessary.

So you should never have had to get involved in booking new flights, since the original airline should have done all that for you.

Even before the coronavirus crisis, carriers were widely flouting their obligations. Many simply ignored the rules and sought to persuade passengers either to accept a refund or to wait for another departure on its own “metal” (ie its own plane, not a rival’s).

It won’t be straightforward to claim the money you are owed; I sense that the beleaguered airlines feel that regulators are not paying them too much attention. It is interesting that yours appears to have misled you by shrugging off its responsibility.

You can seek recompense via your credit card provider, though it may be more straightforward to go to Money Claim Online once the courts system is working once again.

Q My wife and I were booked to sail from Moscow to St Petersburg with Viking Cruises in two weeks’ time. The administration for the cancellation was sorted with Viking a while ago.

However, back in January we both completed the remarkably intrusive Russian visa application form. (One memorable question was: “What is your income and is any of it funded by one of your relatives?”) We then attended the Russian visa office in Manchester, which was helpful and efficient. As we didn’t want to be without our passports for a month, we went for their seven-day express service.

A week later they arrived back, each with a shiny new Russian visa. However, the exercise cost us £370. Given that Russia must now have a large fund of cash paid for visas that cannot now be used, do you think there is any chance of a refund or credit towards a future application?

Martin S

A How frustrating. As a frequent visitor to the former Soviet Union, I have been glad to see it become easier to obtain permission to visit to the former components of the USSR, from Belarus to Uzbekistan. For most of the republics, you can now just turn up with your passport. And of course the less onerous and expensive the paperwork, the higher our propensity to travel.

But in contrast to the steady untangling of diplomatic red tape, the “mother ship” has become steadily more complicated and expensive to visit – as you discovered.

I am afraid that several decades of familiarity with Russian bureaucracy makes me pessimistic that any kind of refund will be available. Yet there is some chance that you might be granted an automatic extension for, say, a year. The Russian travel industry should just be moving into peak season right now, but it seems likely to be closed through to August at least. Allowing everyone who got a visa for summer 2020 to take the same trip a year later would be a smart move to help reboot tourism to the world’s biggest country.

It could happen: my evidence for this is the marvellous year of 2018, when Russia hosted the World Cup. Part of the deal required by the football authorities was that fans with tickets could swerve the visa rule. So hundreds of thousands of us acquired the free and easy Fan ID, initially just to go to our ticketed matches.

Then suddenly on the night of the final, Vladimir Putin decided that the Fan ID would not, after all, expire in July. He decreed it would be valid until the last day of 2018. I duly returned to Russia twice to take advantage of the unprecedented freedom to travel visa-free.

As the Russian economy has suffered even more than most, because of the slump in the price of oil, tourism could at last be encouraged. And even if there is no free extension to your visa, it may be that the rules are relaxed all round.

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