Flight ticket reimbursement after Travel Warning

I've got a round-trip flight with Royal Air Maroc from Strasbourg, France (SXB) to Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso (OUA) on Monday, Nov 10. Return is on Dec 1. The recent turmoils in Ouagadougou have led the US Department of State for Travels to issue a travel warning, which is why I'd like to refrain from the trip.

Any chance I can get a reimbursement for my tickets? In Germany (where I live), an official travel warning can help you get a refund when you book a trip with a tour operator/travel agency, but in this case I booked the flight directly with a non-German airline, so German law surely doesn't apply here.

EDIT: Sorry for failing to state this earlier, but I had already called the airline as suggested in the answers. They had told me it's not possible to get a refund with my standard fare. However, I understand that sometimes you really have to bargain to get a refund, so I wanted to learn about similar experiences and possibly about some hard (legal) facts that I could bring forward.

Best Answer

As a rule of thumb, travel warnings do not give you any "right" to a refund directly from an airline. However, as a courtesy, some (better) airlines will let you cancel or change flights for free at their own discretion, eg. Singapore Airlines waived charges during the May 2014 coup in Thailand, so it's definitely worth calling up and asking. And if the excrement hits the rotary ventilator to such an extent that the airlines start canceling flights, you are of course entitled to a full refund.

It's also worth noting that most travel insurance policies will not cover any costs associated with political unrest, although a few (random example: Virgin Money) will cover costs incurred if you're already in the country when the trouble starts and before the warning was issued.

But if the airline is still flying, and you choose not to fly, that's too bad as far as the insurance is concerned. Of course, if you choose to fly and get beaten up by a mob, the insurance company will also claim you did so willingly despite the travel warning, and are thus not entitled to anything. Great line of business innit?