Isn’t that fraud?

Hey prosecutors! Pretend it is a poor person stealing food and prosecute them.

I mean the airline.

So what was the actual reason for cancellation? Aircraft so undermaintained they didn't have enough functional ones to cover all flights, and that one lost the coin flip? Multiple air crew down with COVID? Exec wanted the plane to take some friends golfing in Palm Springs? Seems like even the tribunal looking into this never did find out, although they did make the airline pay up.

Although this wouldn't really have made a difference in this case, I just want to point out that services like ExpertFlyer will allow you to access the global distribution system where airlines record the actual reasons for delays in their flight status displays for travel industry employees. You can often times find that the safety issue that they're talking about at the gate is really just a crew shortage issue. There's been a few cases where having this comment has basically come in handy for disproving the airline's reason for denying me compensation. And you can eventually use it in a small claims court if you really need to.