Originally Posted by
cedric
This seems like the logical way to handle the situation.
If the highly loaded flight was cancelled for maintenance, then more people would be inconvenienced. And none of them would be eligible for compensation. That leaves a whole lot more people in a pickle before the holidays.
It makes sense to cancel the lightly-loaded flight.
And it doesn't make sense to force the airline to compensate those passengers, because if not, it would create an incentive to cancel the higher load flight and not compensate anyone.
I'm confused. Are you saying that the cancelled flight passengers should not be compensated? (agree, they can swap out the plane to minimize the compensation but they still need to compensate the inconvenience caused to the lighter-load passengers).
Especially an hour out of takeoff. At an hour before, passengers will have already started to arrive at the airport with the expectation of a flight. That the plane that was originally scheduled to transport them was swapped out to service another flight is not their fault. I can see these swaps being challenged as something within AC's control. I'd be curious to see what the comments in the system say as well as what a court challenge would result in.