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The cloud I refer to is not however left over ash from the volcano, rather it’s the ‘cloud’ hanging over travelers who are not being compensated properly! AA Insurance has now done an about face on it’s promise to compensate passengers who bought their travel insurance through them. Blaming their underwriters AA Insurance says that as passengers were not covered for such things as volcanic eruptions they have no obligation to pay compensation.

How about that, insured but not insured  it seems, people who trusted the AA to provide their travel insurance must feel doubly betrayed, especially if they were one of the many who found their airline less than helpful!

We always recommend that people buy good travel insurance, now it seems we have to qualify that further and say, check out the ‘Act of God’ clause and check that volcanic eruptions are also covered!!

Flybe are now offering a stand alone insurance to cover volcanic ash, available on bookings made between April 28 and May 10 for travel up to October 30. The cost of the insurance is 6.99 Sterling per return flights and will cover expenses like hotels and car hire if you have to cancel these due to volcanic ash. Perhaps customers should start to vote with their wallets and try and affect what cover is given by insurance companies?

One thing is certain, this event has shown precisely why you need GOOD Travel Insurance, check all details and take with you any telephone numbers or contact details that you may need in order to make a claim. In the UK if you can’t get any satisfaction it’s always worth reporting insurance companies to the Ombudsman and/or local Trading Standards offices.

If you still get nowhere, try organizing other customers into a pressure group, persistence is usually the best policy because in the end insurance companies don’t want the bad publicity!

I’ve just been speaking to a couple who were holidaying in Florida and due to fly back when the UK airports were closed. They were some of the lucky ones as they were staying with friends in Fort Myers so didn’t have to find a hotel room. They’re also retired and so able to afford to shop around for flights to fit their requirements, rather than take what the airlines may offer when they decide to offer it.

If you want to read how people are doing who were flying with BA then you may be interested in these posts at BoingBoing.net a cross section of opinions as well as stories from people actually starnded by this ‘Act of God’.

So is there anything you can do? Not it would seem after the fact, even though the airways are required (by EU  law) to provide food and accommodation in these circumstances. Before the fact though is a different matter, get yourself good travel insurance, check out what would happen in similar situations and make it a priority to get the best insurance you can.

People often skimp on this, believing that they only need health cover but this event shows just how wrong you can be! If you ever lose anything (I lost an 18th century gold Lorgnette on a trip and was covered for their cost) you’ll be glad to get the cost back, even if you can’t replace the items. If you get something stolen, you’ll also be glad you got good insurance and if another volcano errupts, then hopefully you won’t be one of the people losing money hand over fist!

After 6 days of airport closures the airlines are losing money hand over fist! True they are saving money on fuel costs but those savings don’t balance their losses. It also seems that the biggere carriers such as BA are losing more than the budget airlines like Ryan Air and easyJet.

This is not just because of the difference in ticket costs but also because unlike the larger airlines, the smaller ones are less generous to their passengers! They give less help in the way of hotel and food costs, so passengers stranded away from home are incurring more costs if they flew with a budget airline. Will it have any effect on passenger numbers for those budget airlines when travel is normal again? Who knows but I suspect many will think twice before booking in the immediate future.

The ash cloud has not been all bad news though, coach and rail passengers have increased with Eurostar passengers up by some 40%, it’s going to be up to them to provide such a great service that they’ll keep some of those numbers when the airlines are flying normally again.

Of course it’s not just the airlines that are suffering, experts estimate that European businesses are losing 400 million a day in lost productivity due to stranded employees. Will governments step in and help the airlines and other companies in this fragile economic climate? It could be disastrous if they don’t and equally bad if they do because they can’t help everyone and those smaller companies will probably be the ones who suffer!

They are also the ones who will probably need help the most but what is government to do? Larger companies have more employees and those are the ones they’ll probably feel must be saved.

If you want to be sure that you’re not going to get caught out, watch this video so you know what ‘they’ don’t want to tell you!

Car hire secrets – what they don’t want to tell you!

Then when you’ve finished with that one, you could watch this one

Why you should be wary of drop boxes!

You will then be well on the way to becoming a ‘Professional Renter’ that’s someone who knows all the tricks and tips about car hire so they don’t get caught out!

So who would have thought it eh? Iceland has a volcanic eruption and Heathrow airport (as well as many others are shut down!  In fact feel sorry for all those people who are booked to fly into or out of Heathrow today (Thursday April 15th 2010) because they’re going to be out of luck. If you know someone who is booked to fly through Heathrow, you may want to let them know the problem.

The volcanic eruption has thrown 1000’s of tons of ash and smoke into the sky, the winds have carried it to Europe, affecting many major (and smaller) airports. The problem seems to be twofold, one is of course visibility, the other however is far more serious, because shards of volcanic matter up to 1&1/2 inches long are also floating around and there is a danger of those shards entering and engine and in several ways causing it to fail.

It seems that mother nature can still confound us even with all our technological advances!

If you have booked a hire car from Heathrow then you may want to check with the car rental company or broker with whom you booked, to if you can either cancel or amend your booking, they may or may not be able to help you but it’s always worth a try – assuming of course that you can get through on the phone – I suspect they will be very busy!!

Many airports have been affected, including some on mainland Europe, so check your flights for details.