UKH

The AAC now has very good value "extension" rescue/medical insurance which you can get if you are a member. Worldwide cover. Includes all of North America, excludes Poles and Greenland. 2 options: up to 6000M and above 6K.

31 days cover in North America for below 6K is 54 euros, so much, much cheaper than BMC if you are going somewhere remote where the BMC premium is hundreds of pounds.

This isnt travel insurance (unlike BMC) but gives you 500K medical cover and 25K rescue cover which seem to me the essentials.

The application is easy (but only in German as far as I can see).

http://partner.europaeische.at/oeav_prs

Well done AAC.

In reply to philipjardine:

Sounds great I tried to find out whether this exists for a recent trip and failed having to spend a lot on BMC insurance and the BMC office being extremely unhelpful with sorting it out. Do you know if there is a maximum limit to the length of a single trip?

In reply to sheelba:

4 months I think

In reply to philipjardine:
info in english is here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/idryw2kf9uvlvch/Alpenverein%20Single%20Trip%20Pro...

In reply to philipjardine:

Sounds very good, thanks for sharing.


What countries does the standard policy cover?

In reply to philipjardine:

check it covers non guided trips it didn't in the past

In reply to alasdair19:

I've used it for non European trips and happily ploughed my way through the form in German (with a little help from google-translate). Especially for us geriatrics it's a great option as BMC, and more especially Snowcard, have age weightings, the latter being utterly exorbitant.

Seems very good but bear in mind no review of any insurance is valid without there having been a claim - the proof of the pudding is in the eating!

In reply to philipjardine:
500k medical cover in the US would potentially leave you very very very underinsured should you find yourself requiring a hospital!

In reply to higherclimbingwales:


Really, 720k in dollars, don't think so....very, very , very much

In reply to Martin Bennett:

good effort I reviewed a earlier version fortunately in English.

25k seems like a reasonable rescue cover for Europe not sure about greater ranges stuff. maybe damo will be along for an expert opinion.

it'd be nice if we can have our adventurous trips subsidised by the Austrian hill walkers! I'm guessing the aac is like ramblers bmc and all.our outdoor clubs combined!

In reply to alasdair19:

yes i think they have half a million members (who are mostly walking in austria).

In reply to Martin Bennett:
I have never claimed personally on the AAC insurance , but i think the claims experience is very good. One advantage of specific "rescue" insurance over "travel" insurance is that some travel policies wont pay for rescue unless you are injured/ill. Clearly lots of reasons a climber might want to be rescued even if they arent injured or ill.

In reply to alasdair19:



My very inexpert opinion is that 25K is better than nothing, but might leave you short, depending on the incident. Helos cost (very) roughly $4K per hour to run so if a rescue takes several hours suddenly most of your money is gone, even without any other costs (SAR team, hospital, transport etc), let alone if two helos are involved.

I saw a recent Pakistan helo rescue was quoted as being US$40,000 though I felt that was a big high for what it was. But nowadays trekkers and all sorts of people are demanding helo pullouts from all sorts of places, so the economics of it all is changing. Plus agencies, in Nepal at least, are rorting the system to get kickbacks out of overstated insurance claims.

As for US hospital stays, most travel insurance offers unlimited, probably for good reason. In a really serious accident that involved both air rescue, a couple of weeks in hospital, specialist surgery, and a first-class care flight back home, you could be looking at over a million USD.

In reply to Damo:

very sensible comments.

In reply to Damo:

Costs of rescue in Alaska in some cases were exceeding $25k (€28k) back in 2001, it will be significantly higher now.

"However, rescue insurance undoubtedly would not have covered most or all of the most expensive rescues - those that cost more than $25,000 and garnered significant media attention - because of the claim limits."

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~lepape/ICS667/Project/Documentation/USCongressLawPL...

Nothing against the AAC, great for general basic cover, but my gut instinct on those limits is, that in Alaska it will cover a basic heli-rescue but will not cover you for anything requiring close to significant resource. Which if you need, you'll want.

In reply to JR:

Do you have any thoughts on more appropriate rescue insurance for Alaska? Off out there next month and I was intending on using the AAC upgrade.

In reply to highaltitudebarista:

My general view on this is that the AAC cover limits are based on figures (and the products built for climbers) in the 3rd quartile (i.e. 75% of circumstances), rather than the 4th quartile (i.e. "all reasonable costs").

It might be ok for Alaska depending on what you're doing, but if you're going somewhere, or rather have the potential to do something, for which you might need more than average levels of cover, then you'll need cover that is at "all reasonable costs".

Of course, there's a significant price attached, because you're hedging against the potential for a level of claim well above the mean. I've mostly used BMC, but there are a number of options with fees that do compete depending upon what you want, including Global Rescue which essentially just does home country repatriation bit.

In reply to JR:

yes i have looked at Global rescue (but I always did like thunderbirds). That leaves you with medical insurance to organise. Fine for Americans (or others) with private health insurance.

I think GR comes with membership of the american alpine club doesnt it?

In reply to philipjardine:

You get a 5% Global Rescue discount with AAC (US) membership, but you do get $10,000 rescue cover as standard with the basic AAC (US) membership. It's $500,000 if you pay for Global Rescue