Squaremouth, a leading online travel insurance comparison site, today announced travelers tips and an increase in travel insurance inquiries and purchased policies over the past three weeks during the most recent airline bankruptcy announcements and flight cancellations. Purchasing travel insurance, even for just airline tickets, can protect consumers against unknown airline factors including bankruptcies.

"Travelers who did not purchase third party travel insurance prior to recently announced bankruptcies, could have been left at the gate," Squaremouth.com's CEO Chris Harvey says. "With the recent announcements of airlines going under including Frontier, Skybus, Aloha Airlines and ATA, travel insurance has never been deemed more important, whether traveling for business or pleasure."

Regardless of the price paid for an airline ticket aboard now defunct airlines, more than money has been potentially lost, Harvey explains. "To illustrate, some travelers have been waiting nearly a year for their pending Hawaii vacation and now they are scrambling to salvage their much anticipated trip," he says. "Just as with any other insurance product, travel insurance provides peace of mind, protection and advocacy to help remedy an unforeseen circumstance."

Couple these cessations with the thousands of cancelled flights in April, travelers are asking questions to identify how to protect their travel investment, what types of travel insurance policies exist, what is and what is not covered, what deadlines exist when purchasing a trip, pricing options, and more.

To assist travelers, Squaremouth has outlined the following tips when purchasing travel insurance:

• Purchase in Advance of Headlines: Make sure you buy insurance before an event happens or becomes public knowledge. Insurance will not cover a company that has already filed for bankruptcy or a strike that has been announced or other related issues.    
• Timing Matters: Some insurance carriers will offer bankruptcy cover only if the insurance is purchased within 14 days from your first payment or deposit. Most carriers also have a 14 day wait period after the policy is purchased. This means that if you buy a policy today you cannot make a claim within the first two weeks due to bankruptcy.    
• Help is Available: Use the emergency assistance benefit that comes with all insurance packages from Squaremouth. This is a 24 hour help line accessed using a collect call from anywhere in the world that can offer help and assistance for most problems.    
• Inform Family Members: Forward the Squaremouth travel insurance confirmation email to family members who are not traveling and keep a copy of your insurance with you at all times. Squaremouth provides a single page confirmation document that contains every bit of important information you will need.

Using Squaremouth to identify and compare third party travel insurance options, travelers can protect themselves from airlines ceasing operations. Without travel insurance or travel insurance purchased directly from the airline, travelers risk being left stranded.

"To protect your travel investment, whether a single airline ticket purchase, a cruise, or other vacation, third party travel insurance is the always the best option." Harvey explains. "If a traveler purchases insurance directly from the airline and that airline goes bankrupt, cover may not be valid and the traveler could be left stranded. Without third party travel insurance, they could be on their own."

About Squaremouth
Founded in 2001, Squaremouth helps travelers easily and instantly compare and buy travel insurance from every major carrier. To ensure customer satisfaction, all carriers are rated based on an internal system and also ratings from insurance industry watchdog AM Best. Companies have to maintain a zero complaint level to meet Squaremouth's strict requirements to stay on the system. Along with its unique research capabilities and zero complaint guarantee, the site provides instant quotes, immediate purchase and instant confirmation. Squaremouth is headquartered in St Pete Beach, FL and has offices in Fort Wayne, IN. Squaremouth has websites dedicated to both US travel insurance and UK travel insurance as well as international medical insurance for any nationality traveling outside their home country. Squaremouth is also available through thousands of travel sites around the world. Visit squaremouth.com for more information.

Squaremouth offers products from the following travel insurance carriers:
Access America, AIG Travel Guard, CSA, Global Alert Admin, Global Underwriters, HTH Worldwide, ITravel Insured, Medex, Medjet Assist, MH Ross, Multinational Underwriters (MNU), Seven Corners, Travel Insured, Travelers Liberty, Travelex, TravelSafe and USA Assist.