Originally Posted by
edi_local
It is perfectly acceptable for a private company to cancel your service and give you your money back with 3weeks notice They are not a public service, they can and do make commercial decisions as every company does. You can't even prove they have done what you are accusing them of. Even if they have canceled your plane specifically to provide extra capacity for the football fans that is their business and their business only.
Not so. This is a regulated industry. The CAA were always very hard on carriers who cancelled scheduled flights for other than good reasons (pretending it was a tech issue when it was a commercial one was spotted in a flash), to the extent that it would be necessary to subcharter in, specifically to cover any shortfall. Once you schedule it, you run it. The only exception was "No commercial load". At all.
As I don't remember legislation going through removing this aspect, I presume it's still on the statute books.