Originally Posted by
Eutychus
That's an eventuality I hadn't considered! But is it certain that would there be any better guarantee with a standard airline?
No guarantees, but from personal experiences, a legacy operator will do all within its means to get you to your destination ASAP, even with another carrier if need be. And, of course, the major airlines can transfer stranded pax to one of their alliance partners. For instance, albeit a few years ago now, when my Eurowings flight DUS-BHX went tech, my family and I were re-routed DUS-FRA-BHX with Lufthansa. We still qualified and received full compensation for the delay, which was about 4 hours. Another time when flying KLM from DUS via AMS to ATL the DUS-AMS flight was cancelled due to an ATC failure in AMS. We were re-routed DUS-CDG-ATL with Air France and Delta. In all honesty I don't know what the policy is on the legacy carriers these days, but I expect that the good ones continue to do their very best to get you to your destination ASAP.