ATN,
I have a different opinion. I was at LGW at dawn one day, airside, to go on a "packaged" holiday. The airline just cancelled the plane. No announcement, nothing.
It took 3 hours to get out of departures and retrieve our luggage. (That's a very long story....too boring). Longer to get back to the car park, and retrieve our car. And we had to pay for the full stay. Then 2 more hours on the M25 at exactly the wrong time.
To credit the airline, but not the package Co., the airline paid the EU261 money to the package Co. Quite quickly. The package Co. sat on it, hoping it was theirs, but knowing that in law, it was ours..
All this we only found out because I was an acquaintance of one of the airline's Directors, and I asked him to look in to it.
Why should the MD of the package Co get a positive hit on his budget/profit? He was in bed at the time. We ended up with a holiday that didn't happen, ruined schedules and you can imagine the rest.
We deserved something, and the airline deserved punishment for its (then) inability to run a piss up in a brewery.