Hypothetical.
Poor young student/backpacker traveler on his way home is stranded at London’s Heathrow airport. He has no credit or debit cards, only his last twenty bucks in his pocket
His airline informs him he might be waiting a week for his rescheduled flight.
He sleeps on the airport floor and drinks out of water fountains.
Will the airport/airline feed him or will be be left on his own?
You scenario is pretty minor league. One man really got stuck in a Paris airport from 1988 - 2006 solid because of passport and immigration problems and he did OK. You aren’t looking at a wilderness survival situation here. They always have water and food around and exposure isn’t an issue. Clothing might be an issue in the longer term but someone would eventually give you some. Travelers often have clothes they don’t really want anymore. There are so many people around that someone would give you what you need if you strike up conversations. I want to Colorado this summer and a Mennonite couple with a baby was stuck for a day waiting for a flight with no money left. I got them food and and others did as well just because they asked. They don’t allow real bums inside airport terminals.
I would be pretty surprised if the airline did much of anything, short of what they may legally have to do.
(for the record, in a weather-related flight cancellation situation here in the USA, I don’t think they are legally required to do ANYTHING at all as far as a room, food vouchers etc. goes)
He ought to try and talk to the kids who work the pizza-stand in the airport—They might be able to sponsor him a slice or two when the boss is away…
Okay, well I wasn’t saying it was a situation like “the Terminal” at all. 
We’re talking a single week in an airport crammed with thousands of other stranded travelers.
But unlike most, the young man has no money. The fact that “they always have water and food around” isn’t the issue - it’s that our boy can’t afford to buy any. My question is, would/will/do the airlines provide food for stranded passengers?
I mean, expecting them to eat three meals a day at the outrageously priced food vendors at the airport is a little absurd. You’d rack up a huge credit card bill after being forced to buy all meals at the airport for a week.
In theory, he’d be entitled to compensation under EU Regulation 261/2004.
Depending on circumstances, he should be entitled to free room and board until the problem gets sorted out.
…
If it is the airline’s fault, they will compensate him according to regulations. If he is stranded because he missed his flight, they don’t owe him anything. Chances are he’d be advised to find someone from home to wire him money.
Okay, sorry for not being more clear. I’m talking about what is happening at London’s Heathrow airport right now. Thousands of international passengers are stranded due to the airport’s inability to deal with the recent snow event there.
Many passengers are now being told it may be up to a week before they can get on a rescheduled flight. They are stranded in the airport.
My question is, are these people getting free meals at the airport or are they being forced to pay for them at the hugely overpriced, gougy airport concessions and restaurants? And if they are having to pay, what happens to a person who has no money or credit cards?
I think many airports have a booth staffed by volunteers to assist travelers in need. I think they’re called Travelers Aid in the US. Possibly there is a UK equivalent.
Wife and I got sidetracked (only about 12 hours) in Paris trying to arrange flights to different locations in Scotland/England due to the Iceland ash cloud. The airline provided vouchers for lunch and dinner. Required? Don’t know. They offered and we accepted. Same during other travel delays due to unusual circumstances - vouchers for food and lodging. And the food wasn’t that bad or expensive.
I would expect the airlines to provide some sort of food assistance assuming they can even get food to the airport.
Have him go around saying “Hey Man, I got screwed by the airlines and I’m stuck in this airport for a week. If you give me some money and an address to send it to, I’ll pay you back.”
That might have a bit of success in a normal situation, if he was the only one stranded, but in this case, every other person in the airport has also been “screwed by the airlines” as well, and may be less than charitable…
(Although if this was a real situation I was ever in, and I had absolutely no access to money, I am pretty sure I could talk one or two people into buying me a sandwich. Also, I was semi-serious in my first post; I would talk to a worker from a concession stand (maybe a guy who was on a smoke break, so no others could overhear) and see if he could slide me some food that would otherwise be tossed out. I imagine that there is a TON of it each night)
About 15 years ago, I was suppose to go to our company’s office in Toronto from New Jersey. I called the Canadian consulate just to make sure I didn’t need a passport or visa. Nope, just as I thought. No problem. When I got to the airport ticket counter, the ticking agent asked me for my passport. What? I need a passport? No, I need proof of American citizenship, and my Social Security card would do.
Well, I didn’t have my Social Security card either, but no worry, all I had to do was sign a piece of paper saying I was entering Canada as an undocumented alien, and I could be deported at any time. Fine. I didn’t want to go on this trip anyway.
Come to the end of the trip, and I go through the gate to my plane, and there’s the American customs agent at the Toronto airport deciding whether or not to let people on the plane. Of course, I have no proof I had American citizenship. (I had a driver’s license, a checkbook, but none of that proves I am an American citizen). No plane for me.
I grumbled, realizing I was stranded at the airport, and figured my wife would have to fly down and bring my Social Security card or my passport. In order to call my wife, I headed back to the waiting area where there was a pay phone. I was suddenly stopped by a Canadian police officer. Unless I could show proof that I had a right to be in Canada, I couldn’t re-enter the waiting area to use the pay phone.
So, I couldn’t leave the customs area to board the plane, and I couldn’t leave the customs area to go back to the waiting room. I was literally stuck in the customs room. Fortunately, I did find a voter registration card and convinced the American customs agent that it should be proof enough that I had permission to live in the U.S. Otherwise, I might still be in that little room stuck in limbo. And, I don’t even think it had a vending machine.
That is correct, although when the airlines used to be more profitable they would generally take care of you in situations where it wasn’t strictly required.
Around 1976 I flew from Baltimore to St. Louis (Continental #189, IIRC) but a storm in St. Louis prevented us from getting there and we landed in Indianapolis. It was New Year’s Eve. They airline gave us vouchers for a hotel room and one or two meals, and many of us caught a 7 AM flight (Happy New Year) the next morning.
In this day and age of charging for on-board snacks, I’m sure the airline wouldn’t do anything at all.
Tapioca already linked to the relevant EU regulation. Our news concentrate mostly on Frankfurt, and yes, employees are going around handing out snickers, sandwiches and bottled water, and the airport is providing camp beds.
The airlines are required to provide hotels and food for cancelled or late flights, unless the hotels are all booked out or otherwise unaivalable; the problem is that the airlines could say “Weather is act of god” while the consumer advocates are saying “Snow in winter is not act of god, and after it started snowing, it was no longer unforeseeable”. This will take some time to sort out, so the smart airlines, as well as the airports, provide snacks and camp beds at least to keep the customers happy, even if they might not be required to. Looks better on TV for PR. (The required money compensation will be hashed out later and individually, when TV is no longer looking, they hope).
Here’s your answer to the OP hypothetical at Heathrow. On a flight from an EU destination (and often to an EU destination) when cancelled or delayed:
“When passengers become entitled to these assistances, they must be offered, free of charge:
[ol]
[li]Meals and refreshments in proportion to the waiting time [/li][li]Two telephone calls, fax or telex messages, or emails [/li][li]Hotel accommodation and transport between the airport and the hotel, if a stay[/li]of one or more nights, or a stay additional to that intended by the passenger becomes necessary [/ol]
In the case of a delay, the airline may withdraw or abrogate these entitlements if offering them would delay the flight further.”
I’m sure things are different elsewhere! 
I was snowed in at Belgrade for several days in the 70s with virtually no money, certainly less than 20 bucks. The airline, JAT, put us up at a hotel and provided transport to and from it as well as meal vouchers for the airport restaurant. It wasn’t all that comfortable, sitting at the airport for days, but it was hardly being in a prisoner of war camp.
My wife and I looked like real hippies. I had blonde hair way down my back. One time we were sleeping on the floor and woke up to find a bunch of smiling Yuoslavs taking photos of us.
I think this is the ideal example, and it certainly happened to me when I was stranded once on a stopover in Madrid on route to London – the airline gave me meal vouchers and put me up in an airport hotel. They are also handing out water and meal vouchers at Heathrow at the moment, according to news reports.
I guess the problem at the moment is the shear volume of stranded passengers. I’m not sure whether the airlines are putting people up in hotels – some might be. Certainly the reason many are sleeping at Heathrow is not because they’ve had their flights put back by a week, but because they don’t know when their flights might be leaving and, particularly as it’s the week before Christmas, they are hanging around at the airport in the hope they might catch a flight any time now.
If the airlines decided they couldn’t put up your imaginary student and would, instead, prefer to thrash out compensation later, I guess his solution would be to beg a friend or relative to wire him some money.
I was delayed an entire day in Frankfurt, Germany this week. The airline gave me a hotel, meal vouchers, and taxi vouchers. This worked find, since even though I was just traveling through Germany’s airport, my wife and I were legally allowed to enter Germany with no Visa. However, there was a lady in line at the rescheduling counter whose passport did not allow her to enter Germany without a Visa. She was unable to get a hotel or any accommadations. She would be stuck at the airport until her new flight arrived. Not sure what exactly they did for her.
One of the reports I heard on either Sunday or Monday said that the airlines were busy booking all the local hotel beds they could, so they obviously aim to provide accomodation to a lot of stranded passengers…