In this case, the smart contract aspect seems more like effective marketing rather than a technical advantage. This business could be operated identically with a centralized system.
Yeah it's definitely been done more for marketing but Axa's CEO is on record as saying he thinks the blockchain and smart contracts will have a lot of valid use cases in the insurance industry.
I suppose in this case the nice thing with the smart contract (assuming it works as advertised) is it's simple and verifiable. You know you'll get an instant payout if publicly available data shows your flight was delayed > 2 hours (regardless of reason). There's no human in the loop and no signed contract with weasel words that gets AXA off the hook from paying.
