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In most cases if the tickets were purchase on a credit (not debit) card then the credit card company usually provides insurance should the airline cease operations.
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Not in the UK. Some premium Credit Cards which you have to pay an annual fee for provide "free" insurance. All other credit cards must reimburse the purchase cost for any service bought on credit under the Consumer Credit Act, but there is no insurance to get you home. When Zoom recently went belly up, there were hundreds of passengers stranded in the US and Canada who were unable to get home. The cost of one way tickets back to the UK suddenly went through the roof as the other airlines sought to exploit their misery. The credit card companies would reimburse the old ticket only when they had made an application which took months. The British Embassy in New York and Toronto had to provide a number of people with emergency loans to pay the gouging prices charged by other airlines to get them home.
Those who had bought tickets via a third party tour operator or ABTA on the other hand were repatriated free by the Civil Aviation Authority, who had to charter planes specifically to get them home, rather than pay the excessive fares quoted by the mainstream airlines.
A similar scenario played out with hundreds stranded in Florida by the collapse of Excel. In that case you had the bizarre situation in which people who bought a "discounted" holiday through a third party were protected, and those who paid full price directly to the airline for the same flight and holiday were not.