MilesBuzz! - Flight cancellations and award tickets

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this question. But here goes.

If a flight is canceled (mechanical, not weather) what is the airline's obligation to customers traveling on award tickets? Is there an industry standard, or is it airline by airline?

Thanks

It's airline by airline.
I've had USAir ff miles returned to me for domestic US awards, free of change fees, as recently as the summer of 2007 when just the flight schedules changed. Flight cancellations enabled the same thing, but I had to phone the rewards desk. I found Delta harder to work with because, as recently as 2005, their rewards desk often has overseas staff that have limited abilities to help with your itinerary.
In similar instances, I've been able to modify my itinerary (push out travel dates many months), free of change fees, because the flight schedules were changed. I tried this with USAir ff miles used on an inter-East-Asia award on Thai airways in summer of 2008, but by then, USAir's policy had been tweaked a bit--the leniency happens only if the flight schedule changed by more than two hours.
Alaska Airlines and American Airlines now promote travel insurance options through Access America for Award Travel. If this is their way of covering flight cancellations, I'm not sure. Everything is getting more expensive. A lot of these Award Travel tickets used to be free of change/cancellation fees, as recently as 2001.

If you are asking,
"Will they re-accomodate you similar to people who have paid tickets", my
experience on several airlines is yes, both for mechanical and weather issues.

If a flight is canceled (mechanical, not weather) what is the airline's obligation to customers traveling on award tickets? Is there an industry standard, or is it airline by airline?

If a flight is canceled, I think the universal answer is that you can cancel your itinerary and get your miles back without a service charge, or change your itinerary without a service charge (perhaps with the caveat that in the event of a schedule change, minor changes such as < 2 hours might not allow for this depending on the carrier).

But I think what the OP was getting at is: what does the airline do on the day of travel as far as accommodating you on other flights, especially those operated by other carriers?

I think it's airline by airline; I actually just experienced this situation not long ago and was very impressed with NW.

Over Thanksgiving my family all met up in Florida for the long weekend. My sister and I were both flying home on Sunday; her to Chicago and me to Grand Rapids. She was on an award ticket that my dad had given her; we were scheduled to be on the same flight MCO to DTW, then she would make her connection to MDW and I would make mine to GRR. When we arrived at MCO and checked in we realized that there was a two hour mechanical delay, which would cause her to miss her connection (last flight out to MDW from DTW). The agent advised us she was going to "work on it"... a few minutes later she said that if my sister would be willing to go to ORD, she could have her on an AA flight. That was OK with her, so she went ahead and arranged for an AA ticket (which actually got my sister to Chicago earlier than the original NW flight) and re-booked me on a later connection. I was very impressed with NW that they were willing to buy an AA ticket for my sister due to their mechanical delay causing her to miss her connection, especially considering that she was flying on an award ticket.