[jimworcs]

The only snag with this scenario is that the aircraft may not have been in position as a result of disruption the previous day. For example, if the aircraft was due to fly a leg from say Newark to RDU the night before and stay overnight at RDU to fly the segment from RDU to SFO. There is no way of telling, because airline employees routinely lie to passengers and even the most tenuous link to weather will be used to justify a cancellation. It is time the US adopted the European approach which requires them to compensate even if the cancellation is due to the weather. Weather is something which you can anticipate and plan for and the airlines need to have contingency plans for them. The airlines in Europe predicted armageddon when consumer protection rules were put in place requiring them to compensate passengers for cancellations due to weather. No one went bankrupt because of this and the number of cancellations is down dramatically. Why? Because the financial incentives were changed. Currently, flight ops in the US when disruption occurs take the easiest option... even if this costs thousands of people lots of money, stress and disruption. Change the financial incentives by imposing penalties and flights ops suddenly start finding solutions. The US airlines industry is seriously under-regulated and has turned into a series of abusive local monopolies and duopolies.