Yeah I tried that. People at the counter laughed "you can't do this here" (we were all right there and delayed by the same amount, why not just hand us the cash? Wire it to the accounts from which we paid the ticket? Sign us up automatically and send us the forms?). Okay, I said, where can I do this then? "On our website probably." Okay I open the website, after navigating a horrible attempt at a mobile site for fifteen minutes I found the form and filled it out. Never heard from them again. Guess I should take them to court now?
Railways (NL, DE) pull the same sort of crap. In NL there is a centralized billing system, they know exactly what path you took and when, so also that you were in the delay. Credit it to your transport card automatically? Nah. You need to fill out paperwork and then get a few euros for missing half of your evening. Germany is even better: whenever there's delays, you see long queues at the service center because (according to my colleague with whom I was there) you need to get something stamped IRL as proof that you were really there during the delay. And the amount you get back is still peanuts.
Incentives like these to be on time don't work. I can't imagine more than a handful of people per trainload/planeload go through the hassle. At least for planes iirc it was a reasonable amount, at least for short delays where you don't have to book an entire holiday around. If you'd get it without a legal battle.
I got fobbed off after a 24 hour delay on a long haul departing from London several years ago. I then sent a friendly email to the Civil Aviation Authority and not long after that the airline sent me a cheque.
In Europe you have EU261, which if the flight is significantly delayed (hours rather than minutes) means you get several hundered euros in compensation. The exact delay and amount depends on the length of the flight.
Mind, standard operating procedure is for most if not all airlines to deny the compensation because of "unforeseeable circumstances".
Strike action because they don't pay their employees? Unforeseeable. The plane is broken? Unforeseeable. The airport cancelled the flight like it has been doing for the last 6 months? Unforeseeable.
Then you have to appeal to the regulator or small claims and most people just give up.
Sometimes they don't even refund your ticket after a cancellation and if you dare to chargeback they will prevent you from flying ever again.
Consumer rights are great, but often is hard to enforce them.
I've had plenty of success using the EU regulators to enforce 261/2004 compensation requests if an airline is not following the rules.
It can take a while for the regulator to get to your case, but it is only a 10-15 minute investment to find the relevant authority and to email to them with your information/circumstances. Then 2-4 months later the airline follows up to arrange payment. With budget flights the compensation can end up paying for multiple future flights.
My friend got this money from Aer Lingus for a flight that was delayed until the next day because of weather. They could have argued it was unforeseeable but they didn't. They just paid up. It doesn't always work this way.
The money was more than the flight was worth but the whole ordeal was terrible, literally every hotel in Dublin was booked out on every website (this wasn't the only flight cancelled, every one of them was) and she had to stay in this horrible dirty hostel. So it was kinda nice to get that money.
