Booking A Train Or Flight Ticket? Review Insurance

Bundled travel insurance is usually inexpensive, but its coverage is patchy with sub-limits and exclusions. Check before buying whether it's worth it

- Meghna Maiti

You click Book Now, pick your seat, maybe add a meal and quietly, almost invisibly, a travel insurance cover slips into your ticket. For a few extra rupees, your train or flight journey suddenly promises protection too. It's convenient and feels reassuring.

But here's the catch: you usually end up buying bundled travel insurance without reading the fine print. What looks like a smart safety net can turn out to be a patchy cover with sublimits, exclusions, and other surprises that spring up at the time of claim. So, before you pay that small add-on fee, it's worth asking: is it worth it?

We unpack bundled insurance that comes with train and flight tickets to help you decide if you need it or should you go for standard travel insurance.

Bundled Rail Insurance

Launched in 2016, the Optional Travel Insurance (OTI) policy offered by the Indian Railway Catering And Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) provides 10 lakh compensation to passengers in the event of death or permanent total disability. The premium is 45 paisa for a single trip. This is exclusive to passengers booking tickets via IRCTC's website or mobile application.

"No such provision exists for passengers with unreserved tickets, season tickets, or reservations made via Passenger Reservation Systems (PRS). This suggests that the primary objective of introducing OTI was to reduce congestion at reservation counters and promote digital or cashless transactions rather than to provide an additional safety net for train passengers," says Raju Meka, deputy manager, The New India Assurance Co.