An article worth reading; standing up to the airlines! (maybe we should all be doing this…)

Berns checked the National Weather Service report. It said snow that day was expected at five the next morning — hours after his flight was scheduled to land. He and several other passengers from his Delta flight easily booked a JetBlue flight departing at the same time. His tab: $938.

He landed at J.F.K. on schedule.Back at home, Berns did what any consumer with $15 (in New York City) and a working knowledge of English can do: He filed a small-claims suit against Delta for $938. Delta did not show up to defend itself, so on June 12 he won a default judgment.When a legal analyst from the airline called him two weeks later to negotiate a payment, he declined an offer of frequent-flier miles (“Confederate currency,” in his words) and made a counteroffer: If you pay me within two weeks, I’ll knock $100 off. Delta agreed but asked for a confidentiality agreement. Berns said they couldn’t have both, and Delta took the discount. (A Delta spokesperson did not respond to repeated requests for comment.) “The lesson is, Don’t let them bully you with bogus cancellations,” says Berns. The whole thing took him about four hours, he recalls, resulting in earnings of less than half his hourly billing rate. “But I’d do it again,” he says. “That’s how good it felt.”