Shortly before I found FlyerTalk, I read in a USA today article that if you're deyed and miss a business meeting, that the airline "is required" to refund your ticket. This seems hoaky, and after reading NWA's contract of carriage (conveniently in PDF format on the web), I didn't see mention of this.

Is this just an unwritten rule? The reason I ask is that about 3 weeks after I read the article, I got to the airport at 5am for the 6am first leg of CID-MSP-CLE-MSP-CLE. I was ticketed and waiting at the gate and they made an announcement at 5:30 that the flight was cancelled. When I got to the ticket counter, they said it was cancelled because the airport hadn't started plowing the snow off the runway from the night before yet; I ended up taking a 9am-ish flight and arriving at CLE about 4 hours behind schedule.

I asked if there was any sort of compensation, and the gate agent said that if I called the Refund department and told them I had missed my afternoon meeting in CLE, that they'd process my refund.

Hmmm..... that seems like it would be easy to abuse -- anytime you're late, you request a refund, saying you missed a meeting. I wouldn't think the airlines would go for that excuse.