Your credit card covers the delay, not the air ambulance. It handles cancellation, delay, and lost bags. What it quietly does not pay is medical treatment and the flight home. A holidaymaker who fell in France had 80 percent covered by their state card and still owed 16,000 pounds, stretcher flight included.
The card's "travel accident" benefit pays a lump sum for death or lost limbs and excludes sickness. Even Chase Sapphire Reserve caps evacuation at 100,000 dollars, against an average US-to-Britain evacuation of over 192,000 pounds in 2024.
So the rule:
- Card is fine for short, close-to-home, refundable trips.
- Buy a standalone the moment you leave the country, book big nonrefundables, or plan to ski or dive.
- The EHIC or GHIC is not insurance: it does not cover repatriation.
- Read your own card once: medical or only death, primary or secondary, evacuation cap.
