The worst case for these airlines is always just a refund for whatever money they took in the first place.
Someone could make a killing making a fake airline, taking payments for flights, and then cancelling every single flight and only refunding the people who fight back hard enough.
> Someone could make a killing making a fake airline, taking payments for flights, and then cancelling every single flight and only refunding the people who fight back hard enough.
They did, it's called Air Canada. I was scammed out of Japan tickets by them during COVID, they have still not refunded me and they expired the credit for the tickets. I have tried every customer support avenue to no avail. It's a scam airline.
Canada introduced new regulations in response to cases like yours [0].
It required some persistence but Air Canada did abide by the regulations in my case last year. My flight from Vancouver to Toronto was delayed by a couple hours and I missed the connection to Edinburgh. They, as required, booked replacement flights via Air France (not a partner airline) as the next Air Canada or partner airline route would have departed more than 9 hours late.
> Someone could make a killing making a fake airline, taking payments for flights...
Given how (relatively) significantly-regulated airlines are in the US, I doubt that this would work for long, and I expect that the FAA would make sure that the company lost a substantial amount of money for trying that shit.
Someone could make a killing making a fake airline, taking payments for flights, and then cancelling every single flight and only refunding the people who fight back hard enough.