Is Atol cover vital for my flight?

Q I have used Jet2 for flights to Malaga repeatedly, and have been more than happy with their service. Looking at flights for June next year, though, I have just noticed that flight-only deals are not Atol protected. Is this a problem?

Charlie C

A Any purchase of future travel means placing faith in the airline, train operator or holiday company to deliver what you have bought. Almost always, they do. But when you are buying a promise, you take a small risk that it will be unfulfilled.

I can see no reason why a healthy, well-run airline like Jet2 would go out of business in the next six months. But I agree that from a passenger perspective it seems odd that its package holidays (when you buy flights and accommodation at the same time) are protected by an Air Travel Organiser’s Licence (Atol), while seat-only sales are not.

The reason for this discrepancy lies in the origins of the Atol scheme, back in the 1970s. At the time, some package holiday companies used new customers’ cash to pay existing bills, then went out of business leaving thousands of holidaymakers stranded. The government decided there should be a fund to repay the cash to people who haven’t yet travelled, and to look after holidaymakers who are already abroad – paying their hotel bills and organising replacement flights.

Atol was brought in a couple of decades before the no-frills airlines, such as easyJet and Ryanair, introduced cheap scheduled flying, followed shortly afterwards by Jet2. Book a Jet2 flight from Manchester to Malaga, and there is no Atol protection; add a Costa del Sol hotel and it is protected (obliging you to pay £2.50 extra per person for coverage).

In practice, though, when airlines which are also tour operators go bust, the Civil Aviation Authority insists that customers who paid with a credit card apply first to their card issuer for recompense, rather than paying out from the Air Travel Trust Fund. So I regard an Atol as a disproportionately expensive form of insurance that does not pay out in the way that travellers might expect it to do, and I generally prefer to do without it. In the unlikely event that I was paying by cash for a very expensive holiday booked a year ahead through a questionable operator, I would like Atol cover. But for a flight to Spain in June, I would be glad to save the £2.50 fee.

Every day our travel correspondent Simon Calder tackles a reader’s question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder