Opportunity cost is non-trivial. E.g. if I book a flight that leaves at 10am 6 months from now on an American airline, there is a 100% chance of me showing up at the agreed upon time and having paid for my ticket. There is a near-zero percent chance of the airline actually holding up their side of the bargain. They'll arbitrarily cancel the flight months in advance, reroute it a thousand miles out of the way, lie and claim "weather" when the entirety of America is calm blue skies, or otherwise completely fail to deliver upon their bargain to get you from Point A at X time to Point B by Y time.

Because of that blatant dishonesty by US airlines, every time I fly on one I expect to lose days of labor between booking, rebooking after they arbitrarily cancel flights, and blocking off extra time to waste on their refusal to adhere to anything resembling a flight schedule. That's ludicrously expensive for me, and as we've seen with comparable laws in Europe...doesnt significantly increase ticket prices.

If you've ever been ripped off by an airline, had to rent a car, miss an important event you paid thousands to attend, and told NO REFUNDS, you'd wonder how that's even legal to do business that way. An airline shouldn't even need to be told to pay up...