The legacy carriers have come to rely on a business model which is in direct conflict with what I would classify as "customer service." When you add any form of ripple effect with the weather into the mix, you create a recipe for not only customer service failures, but also VERY costly solutions which usually come out of the customers' pockets. And that's not even counting the long waits at customer service lines, under-staffed phone lines that keep you on hold for an hour until a non-English-speaking agent picks up, and all of the costly fees.

It's one thing to call Comcast and wait on the phone for an hour for an inept, underpaid customer service rep to tell you that they can't fix your problem, so therefore you have to wait all day at home for a technician to show up. It's quite a different matter when a family of five gets stuck in Europe during a snowstorm, and has to pay for 3 more nights in a hotel + incidentals and lost pay from work missed until US can get them home......and the airline says, "Sorry. We can't control the weather."

Heaven help you if anything goes wrong, and you are not elite.