Should You Buy Travel Insurance for Costa Rica After the US Ground Stop?

The nationwide ground stop that froze US air travel on Friday lasted a little more than four hours, but it left a question that will outlast the backlog. If a failure inside the air traffic control system can strand thousands of people bound for Costa Rica, should you buy travel insurance for your trip? The quick answer to this is that insurance would not change what you get back for your flight, but it could cover almost everything else. Ten flights were canceled at Juan Santamaría International Airport on Friday and 23 were affected in all, according to airport operator Aeris, as the US ground stop spilled over into Costa Rica. In the United States, airlines canceled more than 5,000 flights on Saturday as planes and crews worked their way back into position, according to the flight-tracking service FlightAware. For visitors, that meant missed first nights at hotels, lost tours and unplanned nights at a gateway airport or in San José. Airfare is the one part of your trip you do not need insurance for. Under US Department of Transportation rules, if your flight is canceled and you choose not to travel, you are owed a full refund, even on a nonrefundable ticket, and that holds no matter what caused the cancellation. Airlines also waived change fees after the ground stop. What airlines do not owe you is the cost of being stranded. Their promises of meals and hotels cover only disruptions they cause, and federal rules treat air traffic control failures as outside their control. After an outage like Friday’s, you pay for your own hotel, meals and ground transport unless the airline chooses to help. That gap is where a comprehensive policy comes in. This kind of plan insures the full prepaid cost of your airfare, hotels and tours and bundles several benefits together. Trip delay coverage pays for a hotel room, meals and transport when you are stuck, usually after a wait of 3 to 12 hours and up to a daily limit. Trip interruption coverage reimburses prepaid nights and tours you lose when you arrive late. Missed connection coverage helps with the cost of catching up, which matters if you are booked on a domestic flight to the coast or a boat transfer to a remote lodge. The wording matters more than the brand. The strongest policies cover a delay by a common carrier for any reason. Others list specific causes, so check that air traffic control failures or government action are on that list. Coverage that comes with a credit card tends to be narrower. During last year’s US government shutdown, American Express said its card benefits, including trip delay and trip cancellation coverage, would not pay for cancellations or delays caused by the FAA’s emergency order. There are other limits. Insurance pays only what you cannot recover from the airline, hotel or tour operator. Canceling your entire trip over a one-day delay is rarely covered. Cancel for any reason upgrades cost more, usually return only part of your trip cost, often up to 75% or 80%, and generally require you to cancel at least two days before departure. You also have to buy a policy before trouble starts, because once a disruption is in the news, new policies will not cover it. Comprehensive policies are commonly priced at about 4% to 10% of the insured trip cost, depending mostly on your age and coverage limits. For a couple spending $6,000 (about ₡2.68 million) on a Costa Rica vacation, that works out to roughly $240 to $600 (about ₡107,000 to ₡268,000). The same policy usually includes medical and evacuation coverage, which many US health plans, including original Medicare, generally do not provide outside the United States. Whether that is money well spent depends on how you book. If your hotels are refundable and you have a spare day at each end, you have little to lose beyond a night or two. If you have a prepaid week at a jungle lodge, a sportfishing charter and a tight connection home, you have far more at stake. With the high season only weeks away and no way to rule out a repeat, it is worth doing that math before you book. If you decide to buy, you can compare quotes from multiple travel insurers side by side and filter by the coverage that matters most for your trip, such as trip delay and missed connections.