If you have booked a holiday with Thomas Cook or airline tickets with Thomas Cook Airlines and want to know the position regarding your travel insurance policy, the below information provides an indication of what action you should take, outlines what may be covered and anything you’ll need to do to make a claim.
We can only cover you for the scenarios below if you both booked your trip and bought your policy on or before the 22nd September 2019. If you bought your policy after this date, we won’t be able to cover you.
Customers already outside the UK
Visit the Civil Aviation Authority’s website as this includes information on the government’s plan to repatriate customers that are affected by the financial failure of Thomas Cook.
Where your Columbus Direct travel insurance policy includes cover for scheduled airline failure, this would provide cover for any irrecoverable costs incurred for flight arrangements home. This would not apply where the government are able to provide you with transportation back to the United Kingdom.
The scheduled airline failure section does not provide cover for any additional costs or losses relating to pre-booked accommodation, car hire, cruises and transfers. These costs are not covered by any other section of the policy.
If the government cannot bring you back until after your policy was due to expire, our cover will automatically extend until you are able to return home.
If you’re still in the UK and you haven’t travelled yet
Visit the Civil Aviation Authority’s website as this includes information about how to recover any costs relating to a Thomas Cook holiday.
If you only had flights booked with Thomas Cook, you will be able to claim for any irrecoverable flight costs if there is Scheduled Airline Failure cover on your Columbus Direct policy. If you booked directly with Thomas Cook you should check with your debit/credit card provider to see if you can recover your costs. If you booked via a Travel Agent, you will need to check with them first as you may have been ATOL protected.
If you have not been able to recover your flight costs this way, you can call IPP Claims on 0345 266 1872 to make a claim against the scheduled airline failure cover on your policy.
Your Columbus Direct policy does not cover any other costs relating to the trip. This includes any unused accommodation, car hire, parking charges or transfer costs.
If you want to rearrange your trip dates, and provided you’re not making a claim, we can transfer your policy to cover the new trip if it’s for the same or no longer duration and is to the same geographical area. Please contact our customer services team to discuss this further.
Please consider you’ll need to check your policy terms and conditions to see exactly what cover your policy provides and how much you can claim for, as different policies vary.