Is your airline’s trip insurance worth it?

To be clear, trip insurance on its face is not a bad thing. For some travelers, knowing that they are covered if they have to cancel their trip, or if they were to be injured while traveling

or need medical care while abroad, is just the sort of warm blanket needed to calm their nerves. What Heller and other experts object to is the pressure campaign waged by the airlines to

essentially scare or shame you into spending to protect a trip that is probably already protected in the event of a cancellation or a rescheduling. “You should always decline the travel

protection that is offered by an airline or a cruise line or any other travel provider at the time of purchase,” says Birny Birnbaum, executive director of the Center for Economic Justice, a

nonprofit education and advocacy center representing low-income individuals. “The reason is it’s extremely difficult to understand what is covered and what is not. The price you pay is

inflated by the tremendous amount of compensation that the insurance company pays the airline for the privilege of using the company’s website to sell their product.” TRIP INSURANCE

SHOULDN’T BE ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL The process whereby various insurance companies pay a premium to airlines to be the only insurance carrier offered at the time of purchase is known as reverse

competition. When companies compete for consumer business, they must keep their prices competitive to lure customers. However, when insurance companies compete against each other to get on

an airline’s website, the airline essentially makes the insurance companies outbid each other to be the company presented to customers when buying a ticket. The compensation the insurance

company pays the airline for the exclusive right to appear on the airline’s website drives up prices, says Birnbaum. As such, you’re probably overpaying for the airline’s third-party

insurance because the insurance company has to make up the cost it paid the airline. “It’s a water-downed version of trip insurance if you go through the airline’s website,” says

insuremytrip.com’s Morrow. “For the same price, if you look through a company like us, you get a much better coverage plan and a lot more detail.” Morrow continues, “Additionally, age,

destination and trip cost should be factored into a policy. If you want a more high-end plan, we put plans into three different buckets: economy, mid-tier and premium. Plus, if you’re older,

a lot of times it’s more expensive. A 70-year-old is going to have different considerations on a trip than a 20-year-old, so a one-size policy does not fit all, and the airlines are only

offering a one-size-fits-all policy.” Both Birnbaum and Heller advise air travelers to reject the airline-offered trip insurance and instead, go to third-party insurance aggregators like

squaremouth.com, travelinsurance.com or insuremytrip.com to see what various insurance companies are offering for coverage, and the price they offer as well.