Laws similar to those EU laws mentioned in the article.

You can definitely go further than that - a strong consumer protection agency that actually enforced these rules would help more - but having those rules in place would at least help people like OP who are willing to stand on their rights (and in turn that creates incentives for airlines to do the right thing), and is already proven to be a viable approach.

>Laws similar to those EU laws mentioned in the article.

Doesn't seem to stop Air France.

There's ongoing work to update the regulations to remove a lot of the loopholes. For example, some airlines like to try to claim that pretty much any delay/cancellation is caused by "extraordinary circumstances", even though court decisions have limited when that excuse can be used.

The efforts to clearly define some of the vague parts of EU261 have been held up by intense lobbying from the airline industry.

One important addition that has been suggested would be to force airlines to publish the cause of disruptions, so that they can't lie about it later when passengers are trying to claim compensation.

OP managed to get a decent amount of money after a bit of hassle, which is a lot better than how it works for US domestic flights.

These EU regulations do not apply when a delay or cancellation is due to the weather.

I really don’t see a problem here, you can’t just predict weather 100%, so why blame the airlines?

They do mandate some compensation if it's a sufficiently long delay due to weather? (Such as hotel rooms overnight, meal comps., etc...)

Essentially, telling airlines and airports that they need to move their provisioning levels much further from "the minimum we can get away with when everything works OK" and significantly closer to "able to deal effectively when the shit hits the fan".

Net margins being what they are for US domestic airlines (single-digit percentage on average), the additional resilience will most likely be reflected in higher prices for the consumer. Of course, that may be worth the tradeoff.

Slack in the system and higher ticket prices to support it.

For the last half century of commercial flight, however, the airline passenger has shown nothing if not a desire for lower airfares at any cost.

Lowered costs shouldn't mean criminal abuse though. If I eat at a fast food restaurant, I expect crappy meat, sure – but I shouldn't be held hostage in my booth until they decide to get around to delivering my food.

I don't support allowing criminal behavior on the part of the airlines.

But it's extraordinary hyperbole to suggest that too few customer service reps to quickly handle the needs of many travelers during an adverse weather advent amounts to criminal abuse.