The EU comes in for a lot of criticism when it over-regulates aspects of daily life across the continent, but in terms of consumer protection it does well. For all that the Budget airlines have opened up affordable air travel across Europe, there have been some horror stories resulting from delayed or cancelled flights. Friends of ours got stranded in Nimes last year when their flight was cancelled, and arriving at the airport at 9.00pm for their flight were essentially given their money back and told to make their own way back to the UK. Not only were all other flights full for several days, but they also missed their onward connection to Canada. In the end they ended up paying full fare on the TGV/Eurostar back to London, plus a night in a hotel in Nimes, none of which they had budgetted for.
Hence a recent ruling from the EU imposes obligations on the airlines to mitigate the problems caused by delayed or cancelled flights - e.g a refund and a flight home for any delay in excess of 5 hours and £170 compensation plus flight home where a flight is cancelled or overbooked.
The budget airlines will doubtless cry "foul!" and claim that prices will have to rise dramatically to cover this eventuality - but at the moment there is little incentive for the airlines to avoid overbooking or cancellations on the basis of "what can you expect if you only pay £25 for a flight?"
Personally I'd be prepared to pay a little more on the ticket price for that sort of underpinning - rather than be marooned in some remote airport in the middle of the night! And please let ticket prices be presented as fully inclusive - not £1.99 plus £24,00 taxes and charges, some of which are mysteriously labelled as "administrative" or "booking" charges, 2 return flights can easily end up with an extra £100 in such "taxes and charges".
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