This autumn the travel business may suffer from a pandemic of collapses, an important accountancy firm has cautioned.

It is reported that the travel plans of 60,000 people who were supposed to go for vacations were disturbed by Kiss Flights.

Kiss Flights provides holiday destinations to Greece, Turkey, Egypt and the Canary Islands.

This is not the first operator who has collapsed, as earlier Goldtrail, which is an expert in economical vacations to Greece and Turkey, went under in July. And last week, Birmingham-based Sun4U also failed.

Civil Aviation Authority said that this year, 17 British travel operators, which are shielded by an Atol bond (a customer-protection scheme), have collapsed and a number of other companies that are not protected have gone under.

Mike Webb, Chief Executive of Mondial Assistance UK, said, "When paying money, even so much as a deposit, to a UK holiday company for a flight or a holiday package, if the firm is Atol-protected you will be too".

Ian Oakley-Smith, a Director at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), said that bankruptcies may touch their maximum levels like it was observed during the latter half of the year 2008. At that time, 39 Atol-protected operators had become insolvent, together with XL, which was Britain's third-biggest tour Company.