<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by flyrights:
[...] simply based on the fare paid, is LEGAL DISCRIMINATION. The fare one paid for a ticket should in no way give priority in flight cancelation situations... [...] a random way of determining priority which has NO corrolation to how urgently one passenger may have to get to their destination.</font>
Goodness gracious, wake up and smell the euros/yen/dollars. Time of checkin is as arbitrary as it can get in order to assign priority, and it seems your entire argument rests on the fact that you expect you would have benefited from the system.
Using fare paid/class of service is not "random" by the way -- random would have been choosing passengers without any criteria, in which case your odds of making the next flight would have been 10 in x.
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Therefore, some IMPARTIAL and NON-biased factor should be considered, such as time of checkin.</font>
Actually, time of checkin would also be biased, in favor of people who were connecting and had checked in many, many hours before their flight, people with internet access who were able to check in online, etc...
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> "your skin color isn't the one we let on first"... Fare paid is simply an arbitrary and irrelevant factor. Why does the airline even bother putting "OK" status for confirmed, if one person's "OK" is better than someone elses?</font>
You did have a confirm seat on BA xyz, but that flight was canceled. When I read the title of the thread I assumed it dealt with denied boarding compensation (or lack of), but in cases of cancelation it becomes quite different since in many cases it is simply impossible to accomodate all those present on other flights. Yet such cases are, fortunately, rare enough.
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">The airlines should be REQUIRED to disclose at the time of ticketing the "pecking order", so people can make informed choices. Because they don't openly disclose this, it's just another way legal form of discrimination.</font>
If it's illegal as you claim, disclosing it would not change that, and I fail to see why you then think this would be a solution.
Quite frankly you should focus your energy on getting BA to cover your hotel room costs for the night, because the rest is pretty useless.