[mikestew]

Not always. We had a direct flight from Orlando to Seattle that was waiting on the plane to come from SEA (I assume they just run the plane back and forth between the two cities, based on the schedule). Except SEA had a little sprinkling of snow, so the plane never left. I woke up at 4:00 a.m., looked at my phone, and flight was cancelled. No "we rebooked you", no nothing. So I called. Their offer was to put us on a plane 36 hours later. That's not gonna work, we've got to go to work and get the dogs out of dog jail. Tampa's closer, can you stick on a flight out of there? Nope, not even an option. An hour on the phone got me nowhere.

My wife tried later, and after another hour of "no, that's not acceptable" finally got a later flight with a five hour stop in Washington, DC. Alaska Air at least gave us exit rows for the ride home. Granted, this wasn't a "missed a connecting flight" scenario, but the airline's lack of helpfulness does not give me confidence they would act differently. Man, for the good old days when you'd call or walk to the desk, hear "just a moment, sir <clickety, clickety, clickety> there, I have you on the next flight. I put you in first class for the trouble."

On a side note, I find it ironic that the only airline in SEA that was cancelling flights due to snow was the one with the word "Alaska" in its name.