It started small last month, if you consider stranding 900 people on the wrong end of the planet "small." That's when the airline Zoom, which made regular transatlantic runs to North America, zonked out unexpectedly.

The sudden death of airlines creates a ripple effect. Last week, another 2,500 English travelers were left high and dry in the Mediterranean when Seguro, a vacation packager, raised the white flag. You see, the Spanish flyer Futura suddenly folded, leaving the vacation packager that used its flights holding the bag.

The next day, Britain's third-largest vacation seller, XL, gave up the ghost, halting its self-run flights and stranding an astounding 85,000 people abroad. That's a lot of sunburned Brits pounding the counters at tropical airports. Some 10,000 of them, who booked their flights without packages, were not covered by the bond and had to pay more money to get back home. Another 200,000 people with advance reservations were also wondering where their down payments had gone.

Many of the victims of these collapses thought they were covered because they used their credit cards to buy their trips. That's just not the case.

On Monday, with Tropical Storm Fay bearing down on southern Florida, Norwegian Cruise Line decided it would avoid danger by starting a four-day cruise on the Norwegian Sky about two hours early. Instead of leaving Miami at 5 pm, it would leave at 3 pm.

Fay may have been a bust, but you can see disaster coming here. And this cruise departure was indeed a bit of a train wreck. A dozen people got left at the dock.

On its website, NCL posted an announcement of its revised sailing plan at 9:30am, less than six hours before the lines were to be cast off. But some passengers were already en route from other states by then and had no inkling of the revision. Norwegian reps also claim the company tried calling as many passengers as it could reach.

Last month, my parents went to Florida for two weeks against the advice of their four children. We were worried that my father, who is on oxygen and has multiple medical problems, would take a turn for the worse and end up in a hospital. They decided to go anyway (parents today...they just don't listen).

Before they left, I urged my father to buy medical evacuation insurance, a specific type of travel insurance that retrieves "members" from anywhere in the world and transports them to the hospital of their choice. Last year, I edited an article for a website called Traveling Mom about the benefits of an insurance plan provided by a company called MedJet Assist. Afterward, I told my parents about the company and the week before they left for Florida, I spoke with them again and my father said he bought similar insurance via American Express.

You know what happened next. My dad, who has a blood disorder that makes his hemoglobin count drop to life threatening levels (among other medical problems brought on by 40 plus years of smoking), ended up in the hospital. It got so bad he needed a blood transfusion. They stabilized him but he just wanted to get back home to New Jersey.

Over the weekend, Consumerist posted a story about a family that got "kicked off" a Royal Caribbean cruise ship. It cost the Cortes family $3,000 to get home afterward. Shame on the ship, right? Wrong.

The ship did the right thing, and some of the details are here. The situation was simple: Zoie Cortes, seven months old, got sick on the ship and was vomiting and had diarrhea. The family took her to the ship's doctor, who said she was dehydrated and should receive treatment at a hospital.

The ship was leaving port in 10 minutes, so they had to move quickly to get their things and get off the ship to go to the hospital. The Cortes family went to a hospital in Nassau, and the staff diagnosed the baby with a cold. Not serious at all. The family was then in a position where they had to get themselves to the next port to meet the ship or go home. Had they purchased travel insurance, those costs would have been covered. They did not purchase travel insurance, so the cost is their own.