Originally Posted by
hdogan
I am 100% sure there would also be people threatening litigation if, in case of irregularity, the airline kept their ZRH-GVA segment, and rebooked them to GVA-LON the next day - they'd probably be arguing "you could've rebooked me on a direct ZRH-LON or a ZRH-FRA-LON that would arrive at the same time". There will always be a disgruntled customer somewhere.
Well, we humans have this wonderful skill of using language to communicate with each other so perhaps they could just ask customer what they prefer. This is no different than cabin downgrades for example, where airlines usually give you a choice of either downgrading, keeping the schedule and getting comped, or being rebooked on a different flight in the original cabin. The default is the former, but you can almost always get the latter.