14 April 2011

Further airlines to fail? Consider protecting your holiday now.

Independent travellers who cannot rely on the ATOL safety net should consider SAFI (Scheduled Airline Failure Insurance) to protect their holidays

It has recently been reported that IATA has downgraded its outlook for the overall profitability of airline industry over the next year to $8.6 billion from the $9.1 billion estimated only few months ago in December 2010. This is a pretty dramatic fall in net profits compared to the $16 billion estimated to have been earned last year.

The downgraded figure, based on revised industry revenue expectaions of $594 billion, equates to a net profit margin of 1.4%, and was published as the unrest in the Middle East sent oil over $100 per barrel. It is the change in expected oil prices (up from a forecast of $84 per barrel assumed in December), that has caused the revision, and given that oil has remained over that level for a number of weeks now even the revised forecasts may prove optimistic. Despite the global economy being forecast to grow more strongly (by 3.1% this year – 0.5 percentage point better than the December forecast) the impact of higher costs is outweighing this benefit. Giovanni Bisignani, IATA's Director General and CEO said "Profits will be cut in half compared to last year and margins are a pathetic 1.4%”.

Mark Bower, Managing Director of MoneyMaxim said today ‘For any independent traveller who cannot rely on the ATOL safety net (which protects those on a package holiday) we would really recommend they seriously consider either a travel insurance policy incorporating SAFI (Scheduled Airline Failure Insurance), (one example would be from Columbus Direct) or a stand alone policy from International Passenger Protection costing around £5 for 30 days' cover.

Over the last few years we have seen a string of failures, from Zoom to XL and Globespan, and these figures do not suggest 2011 will be very different.

Although this doesn't cover airlines already considered high risk it is low cost insurance for for independent travellers and also covers against the failure of ferry and car-hire companies, hotels and villas and even theme park ticket providers as well as scheduled airlines. It can buy considerable peace of mind.”

MoneyMaxim are currently offering a special discount of Columbus Direct policies to customers using the following link:

5% off all Annual Policies – Click here 2% off all Single trip policies – Click here