After flying up to Queensland for a family funeral, all Annabel Selby-Jones wanted was to get back to the comforts of her Sydney home at the end of a long and emotional day.

But Jetstar scuppered those plans with a last-minute decision to cancel its final Brisbane-Sydney flight of the day, stranding Selby-Jones, and leaving her upset and doling out cash for a variety of expenses suddenly thrust upon her.

One month on, the saga still brings up a lot of anger for Selby-Jones, particularly the way she claims Jetstar staff managed the lead-up to the cancellation and the litany of problems that followed.

READ MORE: Looming change will forever alter how we fly around the world

"We left the (funeral) wake early to get to the flight on time," Selby-Jones said.

"We could have stayed with our family."

Instead, her dinner that night was a meal of nuts from a minibar and the "degrading" experience of staying overnight in a hotel with no toiletries, personal hygiene items, fresh clothes or underwear to fly home the next day.

The 49-year-old communications executive said her ordeal, including Uber and overnight airport car parking costs, shows how Australia's aviation passenger compensation scheme is "absolutely lacking", and leaves passengers unfairly at the mercy of airlines.

Selby-Jones said a beefed-up system with specific levels of compensation, like that which protects passengers flying in the European Union, would reduce cancellations and delays.

"It will cost (airlines) financially," Selby-Jones said, if clear tiers of compensation must be paid to passengers who suffer inconvenient cancellations and delays within an airline's control.

"Right now it's costing (airlines) from a reputation point of view, but it doesn't seem that matters to them."

Urged on by various consumer advocate groups, including the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the federal government is currently considering its options in a white paper that could mandate commercial carriers into a much more clearly defined passenger compensation process.

Selby-Jones is keen for this to happen, saying a new scheme would "encourage the airlines to do better in the first place".

After the cancellation and a confusing wait at the terminal which dragged on for hours, with "one (Jetstar) man kind of roving around with about 20 people in a queue following him", a bus eventually arrived to take the marooned group to a hotel, Selby-Jones said.

Jetstar gave Selby-Jones and each passenger a $30 food voucher to use at the hotel but by the time they arrived at 11pm, room service had closed, rendering the coupons worthless.

Instead, Selby-Jones sat in her room eating nuts from the minibar.

Making matters worse, she had travelled with no baggage on what should have been a straightforward same-day trip.

Selby-Jones had to use hotel body soap to remove her make-up, and the next morning she "had nothing to put on my face, no deodorant, couldn't brush my teeth".

Do you have a travel story that caused major inconvenience and costs? Email ************@******om.au” target=”” >Sign up here to receive our daily newsletters and breaking news alerts, sent straight to your inbox.