Originally Posted by
mikeschumann
This isn't oozing privilege. It is oozing common sense. It's about deferring consumption of non-essential goods and/or services until you can comfortably pay for them, vs. spending all of your immediately available assets on short term pleasures before you have built up your safety reserves to handle unexpected situations. That leads to the next issue: If you are flying a low cost carrier with infrequent service, and the conditions of carriage permit the carrier to cancel the flight with minimal obligation to get you to your destination, it might be a really good idea to buy travel insurance.
If you live somewhere with reputable, trusted, well-regulated travel insurance, by all means BUY IT.
But there also needs to be a passenger bill of rights that prevents carriers from selling tickets with minimal obligations to actually deliver upon them. Whether they bill themselves as "low cost" or not.
The individual consumer here did nothing wrong - they just bought a product, one that was in many cases aggressively marketed by the corporation. The burden to deliver should be on the corporation, and there should be a regulatory function that ensures that, with severe penalties for those who don't. I definitely don't trust the corporations to regulate themselves, especially not a bunch as ethically challenged as airlines.