We highly recommend buying trip insurance.
Anything at anytime can interrupt your trip, which can arise from your own personal circumstances (e.g., health, work) or external factors such as weather disruptions, political/security conditions, airline mechanical breakdowns, and airport air-traffic control mishaps.
If you're in need of a recommendation, we suggest travel insurance through TravelSafe, a highly-reputable company that provides a wide-range of coverage at a reasonable price.
Here are a few reasons to get trip insurance:
- Reimbursement for cancellation penalties (which can be 100% of your investment) in the event of an unforeseeable illness, injury or death of you, your travel companion or a family member.
- Reimbursement for cancellation penalties if you are called for jury duty, your home is damaged due to fire, windstorm, flood or vandalism or military leave cancelled.
- Health insurance coverage while traveling outside of the U.S. as many health insurance companies limit or do not provide coverage outside of the U.S.
- Reimbursement for unused portion of your trip if it is interrupted.
- Medical evacuation/repatriation expenses to an appropriate medical facility or back home in the event of a serious illness or injury while traveling.
- 24-hour help line for any travel emergency, such as medical, lost tickets, lost passports, and other travel documents.
Recent real-world events here travel insurance can save your investment in your trip:
Immense volcanic ash from the eruption of Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano halted air travel throughout Europe, resulting in the largest air-traffic shutdown since World War II. The closures caused millions of passengers to be stranded not only in Europe, but also across the world.
IT/computer issues creaked havoc when a power loss at Delta’s computer center resulted in more than 2,000 canceled flights worldwide. A computer failure at Southwest Airlines caused more than 2,300 flights to be canceled.
British Airways cancelled all flights from Heathrow and Gatwick on a busy weekend due to a major IT failure causing severe disruption to its flights globally.
Blizzard conditions hit the U.S. Midwest and Northeast regions causing thousands of flights to be cancelled as airlines struggled for weeks to recover from all of its grounded flights and return to regular flight schedules. Delta Airlines cancelled about 3,000 flights in a one-week period simply due to effects from afternoon thunderstorms and subsequent difficulties with crew and aircraft positioning.
The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic caused the cancellation of all travel worldwide.