It is at times like these that regular travellers start looking at the balances in their frequent flyer programmes with a degree of nervousness. You have spent the past few years building up an enormous number of miles, saving up for a trip around the world with your family in first class and then the unthinkable happens – the airline goes bust. So much for loyalty.

In theory, unused frequent flyer points are worth a lot of money. In its most recent annual report, Alitalia said it had a made a €75 million provision to cover the redemption of unused frequent flyer points. Other airlines – which we do not intend to suggest will go under – have enormous numbers of miles outstanding. United Airlines, for example, had half a trillion unused miles outstanding in its Mileage Plus programme at the end of 2007 and made a $3.8 billion provision against their future use in its accounts.

So if an airline is recognising the huge value of these miles in its accounts, shouldn’t you be recompensed if it goes bust? Sadly not. Travel law specialist Ian Skuse of Piper Smith Watton says the rules governing what happens to your miles when an airline goes bust depends on the terms and conditions of the frequent flyer programme.

“Most give each air mile a notional cash value at a minute amount such as £0.00001 for example; or no cash value at all. Accordingly when the airline fails there is not likely to be a claim in the administration. Travellers accordingly lose the right to redeem the points for flights (unless there is an arrangement to do so with another airline in an alliance) or to receive any cash back,” he says.

Members of Eos Airlines' Club 48 and EuroManx's EuroClub will know this only too well.

Ravindra Bhagwanani, managing director of frequent flyer scheme consultants Global Flight, says: "The only tactic one can apply here is to burn all miles as quickly as possible - and to do so preferably on airline partners. This is possible in the case of Alitalia (a member of SkyTeam), but often proves impossible in the case of smaller airlines due to the lack of airline partners. Award tickets can usually be booked for travel six to twelve months out in the future what should increase the possibility to do something useful with them.

"Experience in the past has shown that customers should not count too much on the fact that other airlines might honour any outstanding miles, even not within alliances. It should not be forgotten that FFPs constitute a major liability for airlines, which would be hard to absorb by any other airline from one day to another. (However, confirmed award tickets on partners are usually okay since the associated payment between both airlines might have already taken place - but even if not, this is only a comparably small volume.) In the concrete case of Alitalia, I would not rule out that Air France, as a close SkyTeam partner, might take over the miles from the MilleMiglia program - but I would not count on it either. When Star member Ansett Australia went bankrupt in 2001, there was a lot of talking within Star Alliance to honour outstanding miles, but nothing has ever happened. In the case of stand-alone carriers (Eos, MaxJet or Aloha as recent examples), there was no hope for frequent flyers anyway. Although airlines are eager to fill the gap left by the competitor, they would usually not go that far to consider taking over their mileage balances as there are far cheaper ways to achieve basically the same, the loyalty of its former customers."

So, if you are worried about what will happen to your miles, it might be worth trying to redeem them before it’s too late. And, if you’re really nervous about an airline’s future and suspect it might not be flying next week let alone when you want to fly, you could always try one of your favourite airline’s alliance partners.