I was supposed to fly PHX-EWR on the evening of Hurricane Isabel. CO cancelled the 4pm flight the night before. HP had a 2:30pm flight that was still scheduled to go.
Medium story short -- CO wouldn't protect me on HP or refund the ticket because it was "weather"-related. HP flight departed and arrived more or less on time (bumpy landing though). My company is out an extra $400 for the o/w HP ticket. CO won't give me the miles.
Who really decides at the end of the day if this was a weather-related delay? There was no weather problem when the flight was cancelled. Another airline got a flight in fine not 2 hours before. It seems that it was in CO's best interest to hide behind "weather" when it was really operational and they should have refunded my $ or protected me on to another airline.
It pi55es me off every time I think about how powerless we are against the airlines and how one-sided their contracts of carriage are. (You want to change your flight, that'll be $100. We want to change your flight to an inconvenient time -- too bad. We won't tell you about the change until the last minute, but we will give you a refund so you can go to another airline and pay full fare).