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Just one problem: Delta's bureaucrats forgot to include Pennsylvania in the travel waiver. Jittery Delta customers traveling to or from cities such as Philadelphia and Pittsburgh needed to call the airline, endure long holds before talking to a reservation agent, then wait again as the agent secured a waiver from the waiver.

"I was on hold for 30 minutes to get to a human being and then she had me on hold for 45 minutes while she got approval to change my Philadelphia flight," one frequent flyer explained in an email on Sunday. "Typical airline silliness."

Typical? Not so much. Delta's mistake was just that: an unfortunate geographic and meteorological oversight that the airline corrected within 48 hours when it expanded its travel waiver to 16 states. But Delta's error shed new light one of the nastiest parts of the modern air-travel experience: The airlines no longer make it easy for you to change your plans in advance of a hurricane, snow storm or other weather event. They actively arbitrage the "reaccommodation" game, make it difficult or impossible to change and hope you abandon your ticket, thus allowing them to pocket your fare dollars.

Back when flying was more charming, the airlines didn't have change fees. (Southwest Airlines still doesn't.) If a storm threatened your flights, you called your travel agent or the airline, which had well-staffed reservation centers. You changed your flight without fuss, muss, complication or added cost.

The rise of the nonrefundable ticket two decades ago changed the change game. Airlines introduced the ability to adjust supposedly non-changeable tickets. The "change fee" was modest at first ($10), but it can now reach $400 for adjustments to international itineraries. Then airlines began redlining inventory and insisted you could only make a change if a seat was available in the same "fare bucket" that you originally reserved. If it wasn't, you'd be charged the change fee and the difference in airfare.

Then it really got complicated: Travelers started booking on the Web, but the Web isn't sophisticated enough to handle many booking changes, especially in a crisis like a hurricane or a storm. But that did not stop the airlines from closing many call centers, thus creating a brutal backlog of travelers when the weather plays havoc with schedules.

Lately, however, it's gotten nasty. In the last year or two, major carriers have abandoned their old policy of allowing you to make flight changes anytime during the one-year validity date of the ticket you're holding. Now when airlines issue a no-charge/no-fee "waiver," they often demand you use your ticket within a week of your original travel dates. In the case of Sandy, initial airline waivers covered just four days (October 28-31) and required you to complete your revised travel by November 4. In other words, as little as seven days between when you were originally booked to fly and when you were permitted to travel without paying huge penalties.

The problem there? Eight out of ten airline seats are filled on a routine travel day. With more than 15,000 flights cancelled by Sandy, airlines schedules were scrambled and virtually all of the remaining seats were filled with flyers displaced from the scrubbed flights. Even assuming there were seats left over, it's nearly impossible to reach an airline via its miniaturized call centers. (As we also described in last week's column, airline employment has shrunk by 20 percent since the year 2000.)

The result? Hordes of travelers vainly trying to change flights. Consider the plight of Danielle Pietras, whose Facebook rant was a handy summary:

"Have a US Airways flight tomorrow at two. Called them six times only to be told to call back later. Called again and was on hold for one hour 45 minutes and hung up. They tell you to change your reservation online, but online [it] says reservation cannot be changed online. USAir is horrible."

In fairness to US Airways, they are no more horrible than the other airlines when it comes to travel waivers. No matter what their spokespeople say -- and no airline executive would publicly discuss their carrier's travel-waiver policies -- the goal now is to discourage you from changing your ticket and, maybe, to abandon your flight altogether.

"The 'breakage' could be as high as 50 percent," one executive told me on background. "Between the change fees and the [upcharge] on fares and the difficulty of even getting through to a [call center], I could see as many as half of the people looking to change simply walking away from their tickets."

The money an airline can garner on this arbitrage pales in comparison to the revenue they lose by not flying during stormy conditions. Their losses on Sandy alone will probably run into hundreds of millions of dollars. But the few bucks a carrier gains by making your life miserable when you try to change a flight does help a bit.

"That's how revenue-management departments look at it," another airline executive told me. "They see picking up a couple of bucks by making it almost impossible for you to change a seat as found money."

Do travelers have any recourse? Legally, no. If you buy a restricted ticket, you are at the mercy of whatever restrictions an airline places on its travel waivers. In fact, an airline is not even required to issue a travel waiver at all. But there are a few strategies you can employ to limit your financial risk.

• Wait out the airline. As clever as the revenue-management departments think they are, they aren't any better at guessing the weather than you are. In the case of Sandy, for example, the airlines expanded their waivers at least three times while the storm raged. If you can't find an acceptable alternate travel date, wait to see if the airline is forced by nature to allow a greater selection of days from which to choose.

• Wait for a cancellation. If an airline cancels a flight, they must refund your money if you wish because they legally cannot charge for a service they do not provide. So when an airline cancels your flight, they are always more flexible with alternate arrangements you want to make.

• Rely on your status. Airlines sometimes claim the restrictive travel waivers they issue make more seats available for their premium-class and elite-status flyers. So if you have elite status with the carrier, make sure that the reservation agent knows about it. You'll often get better treatment and a better selection of alternatives.

• Use a good travel agent. Traditional brick-and-mortar travel agents often have special deals with airlines when it comes to flight reaccommodations. Having a good travel agent on your side is always worth the minimal fees they charge for service. (Ditto if you work with a corporate travel department.)

• Walk away from the cheapest seats. Sometimes it isn't worth fighting. If you scored a truly inexpensive ride, it actually is better to abandon your ticket rather than pay the change fee and the difference in fare. You will often find it cheaper to simply buy a new ticket than play the airline's waiver game.