Travel/flight Insurance When Planning Your Own Trip?

I've never bought either despite extensive travels over the years, but the right answer for you should be based on your age, health, risk-tolerance, and taking into account any items you can already get covered through existing credit cards (such as luggage loss, etc). See if you can search this site for other threads - this has been discussed at length and folks have a lot of ideas/recommendations.

Check out Insuremytrip.com. They offer & compare many plans. Be sure and read All of the fine print.

We didn't use to buy it but now we buy it every time. My dad is 90 years old so we may need to cancel if he suddenly needs us home. Plus, you just never know if something unexpected might happen.

We use insuremytrip.com

You can call and speak with someone to help chose the best policy to meet your needs. Make sure you purchase the insurance within 10 days of making any purchases towards your trip, that way any pre existing conditions will be covered. Maybe you don't have any, but I'd still purchase that soon to cover your basis.

Hi Jeff:

For my last two trips to Europe, the most recent one taking place a month ago, I purchased medical evacuation insurance which covers the most costly expense that could be incurred: transportation back to the United States (to the hospital of my choice) by an air ambulance. Here is an article that summarizes the reasons for buying such a policy:

http://gadling.com/2010/08/23/how-to-avoid-a-100-000-airfare/

I figure that my financial loss due to, for example, lost/stolen luggage or having to book because of missed flight is peanuts compared to the $100K it costs to bring a person with a serious medical problem back to the States. My fifteen days in Ireland/Iceland cost about $95 through OnCall International.

Please note that the medical evacuation benefit of many trip insurance policies only provides transportation from the site of the injury or illness to the nearest facility that can take care of the problem. This could be great benefit if you are traveling in areas with primitive health care facilities. However, if I am visiting London, Dublin or some other first world city all that policy might do is provide ambulance service to the closest quality hospital which might be a few miles away. Getting back to the States will be your problem. One policy that I reviewed only provides a nurse escort and a first class ticket back to your come city. So what happens if you are on a stretcher with an IV in your arm. That's when the price of transportation jumps up to $100K, and that is what I am insuring against (actually, it's not insurance but short term membership with an organization that provides medical evacuation).

Have a good, incident free trip.

I've bought travel insurance for the medical evac and other medical insurance. Hearing stories on the news about people who didn't buy any insurance and now have major medical expenses, etc.. convinced me that's not much to spend for that piece of mind. I'm young and healthy but you never know. Having the other coverage is worth it too.

Jeff: we have always used travel insurance for the same reasons as others have already stated. We always include the cost of the insurance in our planning and cost estimates. Last fall, we used our insurance twice in the same trip. We were delayed between Linz, Austria and Munich due to the economic migrant surge coming into Europe. Germany closed its train links into Germany which caused us to have to buy new airline tickets to cover a missed fight that afternoon. Then later on the trip, my backpack and CPAP machine were stolen on a train. Our insurance covered missed air fare and reimbursed me for the stolen items.

I grew up in England and travel back every year (for the past 25 years). I never use to worry about travel insurance. But in recent years I ALWAYS travel with it. (I just got smarter about traveling as I got older). You never know what might happen. As someone else has said, the problem would be getting back to the US if something was to happen that you could not fly as usual. You never know when you will need a doctor away. I took a group of girlfriends to England this past summer and one got sick. We were lucky to be in a small village and the doctor gave us a complimentary visit (he really should have made us pay). But that was the UK. It would not be so in the rest of Europe. Also, lost luggage and missed flights can happen. I typically use TravelGuard. If you get the insurance within so many days of booking, they will waive preexisting conditions.