I checked the details page of their top plan
https://media.dan.org/cms/G530_DOC.pdf and cannot find any such exclusion. "
(Don is referring to my earlier comment that DAN's travel insurance policies cover weather and maintenance costs under its Trip Interruption benefits, but not "crew availability." Please realize that my lengthy reply is not meant to pick on DandyDon. Rather, I thought it might be useful to people who are interested in how many creative holes there are in travel policies in general, and in DAN's specifically. And I apologize in advance for this long post.)
____________________________---
Before filing my claim for American's costly flight cancellation on July 1 (described earlier in my first posting), I called DAN to get clarifications on a couple of provisions of the Generali policies they sell. I asked to talk to their "insurance expert." Actually, they have none. They don't know anything about these policies and immediately refer you to the Generali claims people. Note that this sort of like your home insurance agent selling you a policy, and when you call him/her to ask about covering the tree that fell on your house and killed your cat, he/she says, "I don't know. Call the company yourself."
So you can't go to the DAN summaries on the policies they sell. In fact, you can't even ask DAN--they get upset and blow you off if you ask specific questions. You have to go to the policy itself, then talk to the underwriter's claims agent.
In summary, it is not what IS IN the policy, it is what IS NOT IN the policy. AS I explain below, crew availability delays or cancellations are viewed by the underwriter of my policy as not being covered by the policy specifically because they are NOT mentioned as a "covered event."
The Generali agent cleared up a few points for me, then I turned to the provisions of the "Trip Interruption Benefit" on page 35 of my "DAN Elite-G530" travel policy. Clearly, this is the provision that applies to my case--a ramp accident and a maintenance failure leading to flight cancellation with no immediate replacement. The policy states:
"...if you are unable to continue the Trip due to one of the unforeseeable Covered Events listed below that occur during your Trip..."
and then says that it will reimburse the traveler for unused cost of activities on the trip as well as:
"Additional transportation expenses incurred for you to reach the final return destination of your Trip"
So far, so good. The policy then lists 20 "Covered Events." Number 2 is, in part:
"Common Carrier delays and/or cancellations resulting from adverse weather, mechanical breakdown of the aircraft, ship, boat or motor coach that you were scheduled to travel on..."
Note that "crew availability" is not there, or anywhere else. When I talked to this Generali agent, I already knew that American had mischaracterized my flight's cancellation as "crew availability" when it was really maintenance related. After all, the crew was on the plane, had closed the door and the engines were started when the ramp accident occurred. But I did not ask the agent about that. My question was about what records I needed to provide to justify that my flight was cancelled due to a maintenance problem, but the Generali agent never answered that. Instead, he gave me a lecture on how "crew availability" was not covered because it is not listed specifically as a "covered event." I never asked about "crew availability" coverage, but the agent made a big deal of it.
Personally, I smell a rat on this one. The agent was essentially telling me that the airlines had decided to take the public relations hit on their cancellations, no matter what the cause, thereby saving flight insurance companies probably hundreds of thousands in coverage payouts.
