The terror attacks of September 11, 2001 were like nothing the traveling public had ever seen before. When a terrorist attack occurs, travelers understandably get nervous and wonder whether they should cancel their travel plans.

Some travel insurance plans exclusively prohibit any claims due to terrorist attacks and others list incidents of terrorism as a covered reason for travelers to make a claim on their various travel insurance benefits. The key is that a terrorist incident must be listed in the policy as a covered reason for canceling your trip, going home early, accessing medical care, etc.

There are, of course, limits to the coverage for terrorist incidents with a travel insurance plan. It’s important to note that most travel insurance plans state that the terrorist incident must have occurred recently (usually within 30 days of your departure) and it must be in or within a certain number of miles from a city listed on your itinerary.

The following are 8 ways travel insurance protects travelers from terrorists.

1. Cancel your trip and get your money back

Many travel insurance plans allow the insured traveler to cancel their trip prior to leaving when a terrorist attack occurs. This is a great way to protect your trip investment from the actions of terrorists.

If your destination is a long way from where the terrorist act occurred, but you want to cancel your trip for fear of follow-on attacks, you’ll need to have ‘cancel for any reason’ coverage to make a claim.

2. Go home when terrorists strike

If a terrorist incident occurs where you are traveling and you want to leave the area and go home, trip interruption coverage will reimburse the insured traveler for additional transportation expenses (up to the plan limit) less any money you receive from the exchange of your airline ticket (if any).

Depending on how much of your trip remains, you may also be reimbursed for the non-refundable trip costs you paid for but didn’t use prior to heading home.

3. Get medical treatment when injured in a terrorist attack

While travel insurance providers place limits on some coverage for terrorist attacks, there is no such limitation on medical treatment when the traveler is injured in a terrorist attack. If you are in a foreign country and caught in a terrorist attack, your emergency medical treatment will be covered up to the limits of the travel insurance plan.

Acts of terrorism and terrorist incidents must not be listed under the general exclusions for this benefit to be available to a traveler caught in a terrorist incident.

4. Send your kids to college even if you’re dead

Most travel insurance plans include some Accidental Death and Dismemberment (AD&D) or flight accident coverage. If you are killed during a terrorist incident while on an insured trip, your beneficiaries will receive the amount of money listed in the policy details. This benefit if secondary to any other life insurance or AD&D you have through your employer or other sources.

5. Catch a ride out the mess

When a terrorist does their worst, the insured travelers are in a much better position to catch a ride out of the area where the terrorist action has occurred. Many travel insurance providers offer security or political evacuation coverage and they will retrieve their covered travelers and take them to a safer place.

6. Manage delays caused by terrorism

Many travel insurance plans list travel delays as one of the covered events. If you are delayed from reaching your destination due to a terrorist act, you’ll have the money you need to cover unexpected lodging and transportation among other things. You’ll also have the support of the travel assistance services to book hotel rooms, re-arrange flights, and much more.

7. Recover your body

If you are killed in a terrorist incident while traveling, a travel insurance plan with coverage for the return of mortal remains, or repatriation, will work to recover your body and return it home for burial. The travel assistance team will negotiate with government officials, handle the paperwork, arrange and pay for the shipping costs to ensure that your body is safely returned home.

8. Help if you’re hospitalized

If you are traveling with your children and you are hospitalized as a result of a terrorist attack, many travel insurance plans include coverage to return minor children to their home or to a suitable caregiver while you recover. Another little-known benefit of travel insurance is one called bedside visit or emergency medical reunion. This benefit brings a family member or friend to your bedside if you will be hospitalized in a foreign country for a minimum number of days (usually 7).

Your Definition of Terrorism May Not Match Theirs

When a travel alert or warning is issued by the U.S. Department of State and warns travelers about the potential for terrorist acts in the near future, many travelers scramble to find their travel insurance plans and review their coverage. As they say, “the devil is in the details.” What you might identify as a terrorist incident may not be identified as such by others – specifically by your travel insurance provider.

The terminology of the travel insurance plan plays an important part. If the event does not turn out to be caused by a terrorist as defined by the terms of the policy, your claim will be denied.

Let’s look at how some plans define terrorist incidents. The following one is from Travel Guard’s Platinum travel plan:

Another travel insurance company – Travel Insured International – defines terrorist incidents as follows:

In the second case, the terrorist act must be identified as such from the U.S. government. If a train blows up in the city where you are visiting and you think it’s a terrorist action and make a claim for trip interruption when you return home, your claim will only be paid when (and if) the U.S. government identifies it as an act of terrorism. Otherwise, your claim will be held in limbo until the matter is decided by the government.

While insured travelers have some protection against terrorist acts (depending on the plan they chose), there is no coverage for terrorist threats – even when the warning is issued by the U.S. government. Your only guarantee that you will be able to cancel your trip and recover some or all of your trip investment is to have ‘cancel for any reason’ coverage with your travel insurance plan.

Trip cancellation coverage reimburses a traveler 100% of their insured, pre-paid, non-refundable trip costs when an unforeseen event causes them to cancel an insured trip.

What gives travelers pause – and the reason ‘Cancel for any reason’ was created – is that they sometimes have to cancel their trip for a reason that’s not covered by their insurance plan.

‘Cancel for any reason’ is usually a separate benefit and sold as an optional upgrade to trip cancellation coverage. ‘Cancel for any reason’ or ‘CFAR’ is considered a fail-safe by travelers who worry that special circumstances will force them to cancel their trip for a reason that is not covered by trip cancellation coverage.

Just like standard trip cancellation coverage, ‘CFAR’ covers pre-paid trip costs and non-refundable trip payments made before the trip begins when a traveler has to cancel their trip, but there are significant differences between standard trip cancellation and ‘CFAR’ coverage.

Why Two Cancellation Options?

Many travelers make the mistake of buying their travel insurance and reading the words ‘trip cancellation’ and thinking they are covered no matter what. This isn’t true, and it’s a source of great frustration when a traveler cancels their trip, thinking that they’re covered, and finds out that the reason they cancelled their trip is not covered after all.

Hint: a careful review of your travel insurance plan document during the review period will ensure that you are not surprised like this.

Let’s review the differences between trip cancellation and ‘cancel for any reason’ coverage.

1. Early Purchase Requirements Apply to ‘CFAR’

With nearly all travel insurance plans, access to ‘Cancel for any reason’ coverage requires that the traveler purchase the plan within a certain number of days (and in some cases – hours!) after making their initial trip deposit.

Even if you don’t have all your travel plans secured yet, it’s OK to make the travel insurance purchase in time to meet the early purchase requirement and then adjust the policy to include other pre-paid trip costs later.

Just don’t forget to add those trip costs to your plan (even if it increases your premium a little) because only those costs you’ve insured are subject to reimbursement later.

2. Cancellation Timing is Critical

With standard trip cancellation, a traveler is typically covered right up until their scheduled departure. If you have a travel insurance plan and a covered reason for trip cancellation is traffic accidents on the way to your departure, you can be reimbursed for your insured trip expenses even if you have an accident on the way to the airport.

‘Cancel for any reason’ coverage requires a traveler to cancel the trip not less than a number of days or hours prior to the originally scheduled departure. The number of hours varies from plan to plan, but many have a 2-day, or 48-hour, cancellation requirement.

3. Reimbursement Amounts Vary

The coverage amounts with ‘Cancel for any reason’ vary from 50-100% depending on the plan you purchase. In all cases, trip cancellation covers 100% of a traveler’s pre-paid and non-refundable trip costs as long as the traveler cancels for a covered reason.

With ‘CFAR’, however, many plans limit the reimbursed amount – some delivering as little as 50% of a traveler’s trip costs. See a full list of plans with reimbursement amounts and more.

4. Cancellation Penalties Apply to ‘CFAR’

With some plans, the coverage amount is subject to cancellation penalties. A cancellation penalty is the amount the travel supplier will not refund you if you have to cancel.

For example, you may have reserved a hotel room that allows you to cancel up to 24 hours before arrival with the penalty of one night’s stay. The cancellation penalty determines the percentage that travel insurance will reimburse minus the amount refunded by the travel supplier – if any.

See a review and an example of cancellation penalties.

Where Trip Cancellation and ‘CFAR’ are Alike

• Just like standard trip cancellation, a traveler must insure 100% of their pre-paid travel costs, i.e., everything that is subject to cancellation penalties or restrictions by the travel supplier.
• Just like with standard trip cancellation, any amounts that are refunded by the travel supplier are deducted from the amount that will be refunded by the travel insurance plan.
• Just like standard trip cancellation, a traveler must insure all – that is 100% – of their pre-paid, non-refundable trip costs or risk invalidating their coverage or not getting the complete reimbursement amount they expected.

Should you extend your travel insurance plan and pay the extra premium to include ‘Cancel for any reason’? See this topic to decide:

Is ‘Cancel for any reason’ worth it?

For more information, see a full review of trip cancellation benefits in our coverage guide, as well as a full review of ‘Cancel for any reason’ benefits.

We get this question a lot and it’s understandable. After all, travel is expensive enough and no one wants to pay for stuff they don’t need and/or can’t use. Even worse, we all hate paying for stuff that doesn’t work the way we thought it would. So, we thought we’d break down what coverage you need, when, and why.

Of course, the reason you buy any insurance coverage at all is to protect yourself from big financial losses. We’re not just talking the kind of losses that leave you bankrupt, however. We’re talking about coming back from what should have been a restful tropical vacation with $25,000 in credit card debt and no tan lines because that would really bite too.

So, let’s go over the typical list of travel insurance coverage and what you need and don’t need. In this case, we’re just going to be working with the big ones – the ones that could hit your bank account really hard.

1. Trip Cancellation

“Do I really need trip cancellation?” is an important question. After all, trip cancellation adds significantly to the cost of a basic travel medical plan and, after all, you probably have no plans to cancel your trip for any reason. Right?

So, what happens if:

• You get into a car accident on your way to the airport and are hospitalized?
• A hurricane destroys the cottage you rented for a week at the beach?
• Your passport is stolen the day before you leave for a trip abroad?

You see, the thing about insurance is that it’s designed to protect you against what hasn’t happened yet. Sure, you didn’t plan to cancel your trip, but things you can’t control or predict do happen and if you can’t afford to lose all your pre-paid expenses, trip cancellation could be your very best friend.

To be perfectly fair, there are at least 3 trips where travel insurance probably isn’t necessary.

2. ‘Cancel for any reason’

If standard trip cancellation adds to the cost of travel insurance, you can bet that ‘cancel for any reason’ does as well so this is certainly one coverage to purchase only when it’s truly necessary.

So when is it truly necessary?

When your life has extenuating circumstances or you may have to cancel for a reason that’s not covered. For example, what if:

• You’re a single parent taking a trip on your own and your child care arrangement comes undone?
• Your target destination suddenly begins appearing on the news broadcasts as a place of rioting, political clashes, and strikes?
• Your mother falls and breaks a hip and you need to care for her for a few weeks instead?

To know if you really need ‘cancel for any reason’ it’s important to think of your current situation and carefully review the covered reasons for standard trip cancellation. If everything in your life is covered by those standard covered reasons, you don’t need ‘cancel for any reason’, but if your life has extenuating circumstances, it couldn’t hurt to get a quote or two.

3. Medical/Dental

Here’s the real truth: your health insurance coverage may or may not cover you when you’re traveling – even if you’re traveling for business. Plus, Medicare does not cover seniors outside the U.S., although some Medicare Supplement plans offer seniors some emergency medical protection outside the U.S.

Another scoop? Medical care is expensive everywhere. Sure, it’s most expensive in the U.S. and Canada, but a broken wrist could cost you a big bundle in New Zealand or Australia too and if you don’t have travel medical, you could wind up paying for the X-rays, cast, bandaging, and drugs with your credit card.

Many hospitals require a certificate of travel medical coverage and a credit card before they’ll treat a foreigner beyond basic emergency care. To know if and what your health insurance will pay if you are hurt or ill outside your health insurance network, call your provider and ask a very specific question like this: “How much will you pay if I get food poisoning in Greece?” or “How much coverage will I have if I break a leg in Spain?”

Of course, you’ll want to insert your illness or injury concern and your destination, but you get the idea. If they say you won’t have coverage, then you need travel medical or a really big bank account. It’s a simple as that. If you or anyone else around you has a pre-existing medical condition, you’ll want to look into a waiver for that as well.

4. Trip Interruption

Much like ‘cancel for any reason’, the need for trip interruption does not universally apply to everyone. This coverage, however, is often bundled with trip cancellation plans and it’s often included in travel medical plans as well.

Just so we’re clear, trip interruption is coverage that pays for your unused trip costs and unexpected expenses if you have to end your trip and return home for a covered reason.

Trip interruption is useful in circumstances like these, for example:

• You and your wife are traveling on an anniversary trip when you get a phone call in the dead of night – your daughter has been rushed to the hospital.
• Your family is enjoying the Caribbean when a hurricane turns and heads for the island where you’re staying and evacuations are ordered.
• Your family is having a great time in Disney World when you get word that your father has died.

In each of these cases, the traveler wants to abandon their trip and head home to handle the emergency there. Abandoning a trip prior to your scheduled departure can mean extra airfare and lodging, additional transportation and meals, and you could lose the remainder of your trip investment. Trip interruption coverage takes care of that, but you have to read and understand the covered reasons for trip interruption with your plan because you can’t leave a trip simply because you changed your mind or the weather was terrible.

5. Evacuation/Repatriation

This one’s kind of gruesome and no one likes to think about it, but several news stories this year alone underscore the need for this coverage if you travel outside the borders of your home country. Evacuation coverage provides for a medically necessary evacuation if you are injured and need treatment you can’t receive locally. Repatriation coverage provides for the return of your body if you die on a trip.

There are two things to understand about this coverage:

1. It only covers you outside the border of your home country, and
2. Evacuations are really expensive and difficult to coordinate!

This coverage isn’t just for trekkers climbing Mount Everest. It’s necessary and useful anytime you travel outside the range of your health insurance coverage. For example:

• This American was left in Germany while his family worked to arrange medical transport.
• This Canadian was stuck in Croatia with mounting medical bills and no way to get home.

In each of these cases, the injured traveler was stuck in a foreign country as the costs for their medical treatment compounded while family and friends tried to raise the funds necessary to transport them in a medically equipped plane to a place where they could receive medical care within their health insurance network. These operations are expensive and difficult to coordinate, but a travel plan with this type of coverage have the resources to arrange and pay for an evacuation. They’ll also have the resources to navigate the complicated process of bringing a body back home, should the worst occur.

See our post on How Much Travel Medical and Evacuation is Enough? for more details.

6. Missed Connections

Missed connection coverage is really only useful to those on pre-arranged tours and cruises. In fact, many travel insurance plans limit this coverage to travelers taking a cruise. Here’s how it works:

• You leave for your trip
• Your first flight is delayed for hours and you miss your connecting flight
• The cruise ship leaves without you

A ocean voyage on a cruise ship can be quite expensive, but so is a guided cycling tour of the wine country in Italy, or a historic river cruise down the Danube. Either way, you don’t want to be left with no options and no way to catch up to the trip that has already started.

Missed connection coverage provides reimbursement for the extra flights or flight change fees and other transportation necessary to catch up. It’s important to note that the reason for the missed connection has to be a covered reason and the covered reasons do not include missing your flight because you forgot to set the alarm. So, apply this coverage wisely.

7. Travel Delays

Travel delays happen for all sorts of reasons, but if you’re stuck in a place where the airline has no responsibility for your comfort, it can mean the difference between sleeping on the floor of the terminal or having a warm bed and a hot meal.

Travel delay coverage reimburses you a certain amount each day for basic expenses such as hotel rooms and meals if your trip is delayed for a covered reason. Remember, the airlines don’t have to pay a dime when the flights are cancelled because of an ice storm, but they’re also not required by law to compensate you for mechanical failure delays or scheduling delays.

Of course, there are a number of things you have to understand about this coverage, including:

• A minimum delay is required
• The per-day amount is limited and listed in the policy
• The reason for the delay has to be a covered reason

Again, this is not a coverage that everyone needs. If you don’t have connecting flights or don’t mind if you’re stuck for hours in an airport, you probably don’t need travel delay coverage.

8. Lost or Delayed Baggage

Airline coverage for lost, stolen or damaged baggage is very limited but a traveler’s baggage risk isn’t isolated to the airlines. Your luggage and the contents held inside can be stolen from hotel rooms, or left behind on the dock, or destroyed by fire. Your bags could also be simply loaded onto the wrong plane, leaving you for days or even weeks without the stuff you packed for your trip.

As with any coverage, there are a number of things you must understand, including:

• Each policy will have a maximum payout and a per-item limit
• A claim for an item costing over a certain amount must be accompanied with a receipt
• This coverage is secondary to what an airline or train operator will give you
• There are many items that are not covered at all

Many travelers have similar baggage protection with their credit card travel plans, but it’s important to note that many of those plans have the same limits that a travel insurance plan will have. If you aren’t carrying expensive clothes and keeping your bags at your side at all times, this coverage may not be that useful to you.

See our full review of baggage coverage and baggage delay coverage for more details.

9. Car Rental Collision Coverage

If a traveler rents a car and gets into a traffic accident with that car, he or she better have rental car coverage to pay for the cost of repairs and the loss of use charges imposed by the rental car company. The cost of coverage at the rental counter is vastly higher than what you’d pay with any travel insurance plan.

Many travelers today have car rental coverage with their own auto plan or their credit card, so this is not a coverage that everyone needs. The key is knowing what protection you already have and balancing that coverage against your risk. Remember that your auto plan may not cover the charges imposed by the rental car company for the loss of use of a damaged vehicle. Also, none of these policies have personal liability protection.

See our full review of car rental collision coverage to decide if you need it or not.

10. Other Coverage

Most travel plans come with a whole list of other benefits like roadside assistance, concierge services, identity theft services, and more that can be useful in certain circumstances but are not as likely to hit your wallet in the violent the way the ones listed above could.

Still, having a travel assistance representative to call from anywhere in the world when you get into a jam can be a real blessing in certain situations. Having someone to call when your passport is stolen and you need to find the closest embassy so you can get home could be highly useful depending on your trip.

See the complete travel insurance coverage guide for other coverage options you may find useful in your travel insurance plan. And if you’re really curious, here are 9 Coverages that Might Surprise You.

Many travel packages include a range of non-refundable clauses, and the airlines have limited responsibility to compensate travelers who experience a missed connection. (See our FAQ on how travel insurance covers missed connections.)

As hotels look to further trim their costs, they’ve created additional restrictions for travelers by allowing online booking sites to fill up the rooms in their hotels – but only with non-refundable reservations.

When a traveler misses a portion of their trip due to a missed connection through no fault of their own, what options do they have? Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of missed connection coverage to understand this little-known benefit a little better.

We’ll start with a definition: missed connection coverage reimburses an insured traveler for flight change fees and unexpected transportation costs in the event of a missed connection due to a carrier delay or bad weather.

Pro #1 – Get reimbursed for non-refundable trip costs

Let’s say you are on a flight that will make a stopover before heading on to your final destination. That stopover – originally less than two hours – turns into an overnight ordeal as a snowstorm grounds all flights.

Eventually, you get to your destination, but in the meantime, you lost two nights of non-refundable lodging and a prepaid evening show.

Depending on the travel insurance plan, missed connection coverage reimburses the insured (up to the limit) for prepaid, non-refundable trip costs for the unused portion of your trip.

Pro #2 – Get reimbursed for unexpected transportation costs

Let’s say you’re on a flight that has to make an emergency landing due to equipment malfunction. While you are waiting and the airline works to get an alternate plane to pick up the passengers and take everyone to their intended destinations, your cruise ship leaves the dock without you.

Instead of being out thousands of dollars in cruise costs, travel insurance will reimburse you (up to the plan limit) for the unexpected transportation costs (usually air and/or water) so you can catch up to your cruise in the next port.

Con #1 – Some plans limit missed connection benefits to cruises

Some travel insurance plans limit their missed connection coverage only to missed cruise departures, so travelers who are not taking a cruise, but lose a portion of their trip due to a missed connection are simply out of luck.

Con #2 – There are other restrictions to missed connection coverage

As with all insurance coverage, there are limits and restrictions to understand, so it pays to read the description of coverage carefully. In the case of missed connection coverage, here are the key points to note:

• The reason for your missed connection must be a covered reason. For example, you can’t wander into a comfortable lounge during a layover, fall asleep and expect to have travel insurance pay up when you miss your next flight.
• You must allow enough time in your planned itinerary to reach your next flight or cruise.
• Any refunds you receive from other suppliers, such as the airline, will be deducted from your claim benefit.
• The benefits received as a result of a missed connection claim can’t duplicate those provided by travel delay coverage.
• The benefit amount for a missed connection is limited by the plan’s definition.
• The missed connection is determined by the number of hours you are delayed as defined in the plan.

Missed connections are no fun and they put a traveler in a really tough spot, so avoiding them is ideal. The best way to protect yourself from having to endure a missed connection? Allow plenty of time in your itinerary and don’t book tight connections.

See our full review of missed connection coverage for more details.