A lot of people have been asking me how I feel about the recent shakeups with various airlines.

When an airline folds, there isn’t much you can do. If you have travel insurance, you should be able to recoup your monetary losses, unless you bought the policy directly from the airline which is now belly up. If you are booking an expensive trip, you should always carry insurance with a company separate from the one you are traveling with and be sure you are covered if an operator goes out of business. Generally insurance must be purchased within a few days of making your reservations to include such coverage. Check out Insuremytrip.com for some travel insurance options.

The recent flight cancellations, most of them on American Airlines, were due to safety concerns that the carrier had to correct before allowing certain aircraft models to continue flying. Although airlines should be responsible and on top of these issues before they turn into a huge mess, incidents like this may happen occasionally. Hopefully, the airlines have learned a lesson from this debacle and it won’t happen on such a widespread scale again. If a flight is cancelled due to faulty aircraft, the offending airline must rebook affected passengers but the times and days of new flights will vary. My advice is to be calm with airline agents and get through the inconvenience as best you can. When you are finally home, don’t hesitate to call or write the airline about your experience and voice your complaints and concerns. If an airline does this to you repeatedly, and you have the option, take your business elsewhere.

As far as airline mergers go, don’t lose sleep over them. When Delta and Northwest merge, your miles will be safe and you will have more opportunities to earn them under one program. Yes, it could cause higher ticket prices due to reduced competition, but there are always going to be new routes and new airlines popping up and you will always be able to find deals.

Deep breaths…we can get through all of this and be ok!!