Ballyctid,
I appreciate that you are frustrated, but as I understand it, you had a bit of information from an insider that it was likely that the flight from MXP to BHX would be cancelled? Based on this you asked to transfer to the MAN, am I correct?
I totally understand your thought process, seems quite logical. However, think about it another way.
Firstly, as far as the staff working the desk in MXP were concerned, the flight to BHX was still scheduled and planned to operate, therefore, no free transfer. They spoke to someone at Flybe (most likely someone in ground services department) who also see that the flight was currently still scheduled, so they do not agree to a free transfer. Until the flight is cancelled, nothing can happen - ground services folk play no part in deciding which flights get cancelled, they react to decisions made by flight ops, which I am sure you understand.
Now that could suggest that flight ops could have been more decisive and cancelled the flight earlier to facilitate alternative plans, however, cancelling a flight early when there is even a small chance you can launch it later in the day would be a bit foolish. You were not the only passenger on the flight and quite rightly, flight ops would have been aiming to get everyone where they want to be of at all possible. A balance has to be struck. Also worth noting that a major reason that the flight wasn't cancelled much earlier could have been due to the over optimistic BHX airport predications of when runway would be up and running (BHX has been snow closed a number of times over the last week).
Also worth remembering that on a day with delays and cancellations, the staff will have heard all sorts of rants from passengers. You turning up claiming that you've heard that the BHX flight will or may be cancelled (if indeed you mentioned it to the staff) is unlikely to make any diffence. Ground services and ticket desk staff quite rightly do not make decisions based on the hunches of passengers. They can only work with the information that they have been given.
You could of course have paid for the transfer and then attempted to argue that you were due a refund for the fee later after the BHX was cancelled. Although I suspenct that would have been fruitless given that you'd changed your flight before the cancellation, but that would have been a very different argument.
Basically, as unfortunate as it may have been for you, I don't really see what realistically could have happened differently. You would have been put up in a hotel and offered a the next available flight.
Despite what you might think, Flybe (or rather the people at Flybe) do not set out to ruin peoples plans... they generally work damn hard and do their best to get as many people where they want to be as quickly as possible, all for little or no thanks. But regardless of what I have said, you were inconvenienced and will likely not change your mind. But given that you work or have worked in aviation before, I'm surprised that all this is not really obvious to you.
And btw I don't work in ground services or flight ops so I'm not defending my own position here
