[rainsford]

That's not necessarily true. Yes, the change to requiring refunds rather than compensation that airlines can weasel out of raises an airline's cost of cancellation, but passing that cost along to their customers makes them less competitive compared to airlines that have better on-time performance. A refund requirement means they can't have their cake (low fares) and eat it too (shitty on-time performance), and there is real financial disincentive to having terrible reliability...or financial incentive to be more reliable.