Travel Insurance and plane diversions - are you insured if your plane diverts to another country?

[cakeorwine]

Just looking up some travel insurance quotes and my mind wandered.

So you are on a flight and it gets diverted. You then land in a country that is not on your insurance declaration. Or you are transiting through an airport and you get ill and need to be admitted to a local hospital.

Are you insured for that country?

I know it's unlikely - but planes do get diverted, people do end up in countries they hadn't planned to and people do get ill in transit.

I had a look at my policy I have - and it says you don't need to declare a country if you are stopping over for less than 12 hours and you aren't leaving the airport.

It doesn't say what happens in other unforeseen circumstances.

And some countries have very expensive medical costs

Look up Force Majeure.

That doesn't really answer the question.

Imagine you are on a flight to say Canada and it gets diverted to the USA due to weather. You are waiting in transit and you feel ill and you are taken to a hospital.

It could be an expensive bill.

Do you have one trip insurance or annual insurance?

I have annual world wide insurance so assume I'd be insured throughout.

You usually state a region so a trip to Canada is likely to include US cover. If you do not exit an airport via Passport Control you are not in the country yet.

We got travel insurance for Europe last year but it excluded Spain as the region.

So I presume we wouldn't have been covered if the plane had had to divert to Spain and we had to leave the airport and were ill then.

If you change planes in USA even if you are flying to another country, you have to go through immigration.

I have annual world wide insurance so assume I'd be insured throughout
World wide doesn't necessarily mean every country in the world.

The question is:

You're on a plane flight. You feel ill and the plane has to divert to an airport to take you to a hospital.

The hospital is not in a country / region you are insured for.

I presume you aren't insured for that country, even if you have medical insurance for the trip that you planned.

Or similarly, your plane ends up in a country that your insurance isn't for - and you get ill.