Bingo. This was a LCC, so they don’t care about even the high-status passengers. I would have done what the author did too and just booked my own arrangements.

Bingo. This was a LCC, so they don’t care about even the high-status passengers. I would have done what the author did too and just booked my own arrangements. I also totally agree with your bucket of passengers. I used to be in the first camp, naively assuming a gate agent could help me. That quickly changed after I flew more than a handful of times. Then for many years, I was in the third camp (where you are), and I had to resign myself to being one of the people that has to turn to Twitter to get anything done (I sort of hate myself for it but for non LCCs, it works) in a real crisis. For the last two years or so (pre-COVID), I was in the second camp, and it was a true revelation to see how the other side lives, so to speak. The reality is that there are two very distinct classes of airline passengers (foregoing LCC's for a moment because with few exceptions, none of them give a rats ass about loyalty. They are a volume business). As an example, within a relatively short period of time, I went from an airline giving my seat away even though I made my connecting flight (and had contacted the airline from the plane to warn about my delayed connection/assure them I wasn’t going to no show and to only put me on a later flight as a backup), forcing me to wait an additional 5 hours in the airport for a new flight (and I stress here that I made my connection and was denied boarding) without so much as an apology or a voucher for free food to that exact same airline, when a similar tight connection actually DID cause me to miss my flight, met me at the gate, took me in a chauffeured car to another gate, had someone expedite the transfer of my luggage, got me on a different flight to another US city (meaning I had to take one more flight, but at least I got home), actually held that flight until I boarded, and kept my seat class intact (I was flying business). I didn’t even have to reach out the second time (which was good because that flight didn’t have internet access), it was just taken care of. A colleague who had the same itinerary as me, and was booked in the same seat class, had to fly back the next day. The difference? My colleague (and me in the first instance), was just a regular passenger (albeit someone with a $4000 round-trip ticket in this case — still didn’t matter). Whereas by that second flight, I was on track to fly 150,000 miles that calendar year and had already spent over $30,000 with that airline. I'll be honest when I say that I’m not looking forward to being treated like a regular airline passenger once I’m allowed to travel again. My status's are all intact but I don’t envision many 150k mile years made up largely of international travel until at least 2022. Side note, as someone who has always heard friends brag about how much better European consumer protection laws are, it’s both relieving and infuriating to see that the situation in the EU is basically identical to the situation non high-value US customers deal with with airlines.