All excellent questions which I have been asking myself, as we have a return flight in first to YVR in three weeks booked on with an Amex 2-4-1 voucher and our travel insurance is with the Amex Centurion card - although the Amex BA Premier card also has an insurance component.

To begin, a principle of insurance; insurance only covers actual losses incurred. That obviously covers the fees and other charges paid on an award ticket (in my case, astonishingly, over £350), but does it cover anything else?

The kernel of the questions is;

• what value can be attached to award tickets, excluding taxes and other charges paid in cash, if any, and
• what value can be attached to the second ticket issued against a 2-4-1 voucher, excluding taxes and other charges paid in cash, if any.

Unless specifically provided otherwise, the replacement cost is not a factor is determining the insured value. In this context there is no discernible link between the value of the award & 2-4-1 tickets and any published retail fare. There is a strong case for arguing that these tickets have no value as no specific consideration was given (i.e. no payment was directly made) for the tickets, so the value could be said to the the contractual value of the award mile, typically .00001p.

The answer probably comes down to the value (or lack of value) that the BA & Amex place on the adverse publicity that they may attract if they play hard ball (as evidenced by a posting I made earlier today about the Canadian musician who got his revenge for his guitars that were damaged by an unresponsive airline with a hit U-tube video mocking the airline). BA are getting a bad press at the moment so they may be responsive. Alternatively, with yet another summer strike on the horizon, they may feel that their image can't get any worse, so they may not care about people in this situation at all.

It's a tough one, and we are all in the same boat.