Originally Posted by
corporate-wage-slave
The first story - about not getting to Portugal and losing a pre-booked (and quite expensive) villa - seemed similar to a set of posts put here in the FT. It was a bit of an eye opener for me: the fact that airlines treat this as "consequential" is well known here, but what I didn't appreciate is that insurance companies can (and do) also treat consequential losses as non recoverable. The family here used the Post Office's insurance scheme, which I hitherto would have put in the "good guys" section. I hope they pursue this via the Ombudsman process mentioned in the article...
I found this unexpected too. Looking at the Post Office policy, which covers between £1000 and £10000 of cancellation cover, depending up on the policy chosen, it appears that only the following scenario for flight cancellations are covered:
Industrial action
Adverse weather
Technical failure of aircraft
Unfortunately other circumstances of failure of transportation which result in cancellation of the trip are not included. Seems harsh.