Cathay Pacific Travel Insurance - 2024 Review

Cathay Pacific is the world’s fifth largest airline and travels to more than 190 destinations. It is also the world’s largest international cargo airline with its main hub in Hong Kong.

Travel Insurance is not offered when booking flights with Cathay out of the USA, which is great news for customers. Travelers can look at the entire trip insurance market to get the best rates and coverage.

Those of us who fly within the USA know that most airlines will offer flight insurance at checkout. However, the airline travel insurance offered is often of limited value and can be expensive compared to travel insurance offered in the open marketplace. So, the fact that Cathay Pacific does not market ‘Cathay Pacific Travel Insurance’ is terrific. Customers can now choose – we’ll show you how.

But first, let’s book a sample trip on Cathay Pacific.

Cathay Pacific – Site Layout

The booking screens are fairly intuitive and have a lot of initial options to be selected.

The system defaults to Economy Fare for 1 Adult. The pulldown allows you to choose your fare and select the number of travelers by ages.

Unfortunately, not all fares can be shown at one time. You have to select either Economy, Premium Economy, Business or First class. Economy - will show Economy and Premium Economy, Premium Economy - will show Premium Economy and Business, or Business –will show Business and First Class. If you opt for a different fare class, you have to start all over at the homepage and begin again.

Our Sample Trip – Seattle to Hong Kong

For our sample trip, we have two 72-year-old travelers traveling from Seattle to Hong Kong November 13, through November 30. The following are the various fare prices our travelers can choose from:

Economy Pricing:

Options for Economy Fares:

Premium Economy Pricing showing Premium Economy and Business Class:

Business Class Pricing showing Business and First Class (if available):

The biggest difference in the Economy and Business fares is how much you’ll need to pay if you cancel, change your flight, or don’t show up. The difference in premium between Lite and Essential is nearly $100 simply to save $50 in penalty fee costs if we need to cancel, change the flight, or don’t show up. The difference between Flex and Essential is a bit over $100 to save $150 in penalty costs.

What does a customer get for the extra cost by choosing a higher-price fare? Not much. Re-booking and Cancellation fees are less expensive. A few more ‘Asia Miles’ to add to our account. But really, that is it.

We will show a little later why we never book Refundable seats, and also how to insure non-refundable risk away.

Since we’d have to pay penalty fees with any fare except First Class, we opted for Economy as the pricing difference between Economy and the other fares didn’t make them worthwhile and seat selection would be the same.

Once we choose the flights, we have the option to choose seats. For flights with select seating available, we will pay $48 for a window seat, $45 for a middle seat and $51 for an aisle seat.

After choosing seats, increasing our cost by $186, and adding the fuel surcharge and fees of $760.80, our final cost is $3,777.36:

So now we have our final price. Let’s shop for insurance for our trip.

Travel Insurance – Compare and Save

We explained that Cathay Pacific Travel Insurance is not available when we buy our ticket online. So, let’s shop around. At TravelDefenders that is exactly what we do for you. We get binding insurance quotes, anonymously, from all our major travel insurance carriers and provide them to you within seconds.

Inputting our trip details and our total premium for the trip into the TravelDefenders quote system, we’re presented with 15 quotes to review.

For travel to Asia and Australia/New Zealand or beyond, TravelDefenders recommends having a minimum of $100,000 of medical coverage and a minimum of $500,000 of medical evacuation coverage.

The least expensive plan on our list that has adequate medical coverage is the AIG Travel Guard Plus plan. This plan provides $100,000 of medical coverage per traveler and $1 million of medical evacuation coverage per traveler. It will also waive any pre-existing medical conditions if the policy is purchased within 21 days of the initial trip payment or deposit date. The total cost for both travelers combined is $349.40.

Should we need to cancel our trip due to an illness, injury or other reason listed in the policy, we would receive a 100% refund of our non-refundable trip costs, including non-refundable airline tickets! We can also cancel and receive a 100% refund if we are employed, and our employer rescinds our vacation.

But what if we want maximum flexibility to cancel for any reason whatsoever? If available, we can opt for a Cancel For Any Reason (CFAR) policy.

Cancel for Any Reason (CFAR) Travel Insurance

Some people prefer to have a policy in place that provides Cancel for Any Reason coverage.

This is a super-powerful benefit that does exactly what it says. A traveler needs to have no reason at all to cancel and still receive a significant refund. The policies that provide this benefit rebate at 50% - 75% depending on the policy selected.

The use of Cancel for Any Reason insurance to lower ticket prices has been described as the Airline Ticket Hack. Refundable benefits, yet with Non-Refundable ticket costs. For this reason, we rarely recommend booking a Refundable seat. We see little point in spending hundreds or even thousands more for a refundable seat when we can cover most of our needs with low-cost trip insurance.

The Travel Insured International Worldwide Trip Protector Plus (CFAR 75%) is the least expensive Cancel For Any Reason policy that provides the maximum 75% refund if we cancel for a reason NOT listed in the policy. Benefits are similar to the AIG Travel Guard Plus policy, providing $100,000 of medical coverage, $1 million of medical evacuation coverage, and waiving pre-existing medical conditions if purchased within 21 days of the initial trip payment or deposit date. The total cost for both travelers combined is $530.00.

TravelDefenders – One Site – Many Carriers

We love Amazon and are fans of Expedia. Comparison-shopping is simple. Sites like TravelDefenders do the same for travel insurance. Would you like to visit each travel insurance carrier directly? Of course not. Take the Amazon-like travel insurance experience at TravelDefenders.

When buying trip insurance, which policy should you choose? That’s the beauty of insurance comparison – you get to see all the best prices in the market.

Does TravelDefenders charge More?

Take a look at the article Travel Insurance Comparison – Will I Pay More Buying Travel Insurance from a Comparison Website? You won’t find the same trip insurance plans available at a better price – price certainty is guaranteed as a result of anti-discriminatory insurance law in the US. This is really powerful consumer protection.

A travel insurance marketplace like TravelDefenders will offer a multitude of different plans from some of the most respected travel insurance carriers in the country. You will only need a few minutes to check value for money, cover, and insurance carrier ratings.

So, next time you travel on Cathay Pacific, be sure to pack your travel insurance.

Safe travels!