
How hard is it to understand that the airlines are for profit companies, not tax payer funded services? They could easily afford to fully refund an entire plane of passengers every time a flight is canceled but it’s going to their CEOs and pilots who game the system and make 7 figures while only working a week per month
Here’s the thing, that doesn’t satisfy the problem in most cases. If you’re trying to get somewhere by a specific date, rebooking usually voids the whole purpose of booking the original flight in the first place. They’re often times full days later than your original flight. So you get no refund, and you waste money on a useless flight that you’ll surely have to cancel
I recently had a friend trying to get from Texas to Ohio, and the originally direct flight was pushed back several hours and added a layover in Florida during a hurricane, for literally no reason. Then that got canceled, and the next available flight was a full 24 hours after the layover flight. He ended up finally getting here a full 3 days later and had half his trip wasted by clueless airlines, and never got a refund of any kind beyond a voucher he’ll never be able to use