Canada’s recently-updated air passenger protection rules could be in for more changes in favour of consumers, if Canada’s Transport Minister has his way.
Omar Alghabra says he is looking at fortifying air passenger protection regulations yet again, and putting the onus on airlines, not the dispute mechanism of the Canadian Transport Agency (CTA), to ensure customers are fairly compensated for delays and cancellations.
The news follows a holiday travel season that failed to avoid repeating the travel mess of the summer months - despite government-sponsored stakeholder meetings and an industry summit in the fall designed to ensure the spike in end-of-year travel would go smoothly.
In an interview that aired Saturday, 07JAN, Alghabra told CBC the federal government is looking at ways to strengthen regulations so that passengers don’t have to file disputes with the CTA to solve complaints against airlines.
"Last summer and this winter, we've seen certain examples where passengers felt they were not communicated with, their rights were not upheld," he said. "So we need to strengthen the rules."
The Air Passenger Protections Regulations (APPR) were updated in SEP2022, strengthening minimum airline requirements in the case of flight delays or cancellations, including “standards of treatment” and “compensation for passengers,” among other requirements, crucially, whether or not those delays or cancellations were within airlines' control, as Open Jaw has reported.
Nevertheless, as the Transport Minister acknowledged, the system still requires affected pax to file claims with the airlines and take unresolved disputes to the CTA - then wait. And wait.
The CTA said that as of 20DEC 2022, it had over 31,000 complaints pending - and the wait time between when a case is submitted and when it is reviewed is over 18 months.
"Currently, it feels to many passengers that the burden is on them," Alghabra told CBC. "We want to make sure we put rules in place to ensure that the burden is on the airline."
Critics say that not only the wait time is unacceptable, so is the lack of action to fine airlines who breach the APPR.
As Open Jaw has reported, John Gradek, faculty lecturer and coordinator of McGill University’s aviation management program, said that the CTA dispute process isn’t working.
“They are not the right tool and not the right vehicle to in fact look at adjudicating and making decisions about appeals from customers about airlines’ refusals to in fact pay compensation. There’s got to be a better way,” Gradek said.
“We have a system that we have established under the APPR that defines what the violation of these rules are, they are not being applied, they are not being enforced,” Gradek added.
The CAA’s air passenger rights expert, Ian Jack, told CBC pax affected by delays and cancellations shouldn’t have to complain or file disputes in the first place - the rules should require airlines to fairly and properly compensate their customers without a CTA ruling or dispute process.
Especially since, as Quebec-based lawyer and consumer advocate Sylvie De Bellefeuille says, too many passengers end up not even trying to get the compensation to which they are entitled.
"They feel like it's going to be a David against Goliath kind of situation, so a lot of people simply don't request anything," she said.
Open Jaw published parts of an open letter from Sunwing 06JAN in which the company committed to fully comply with Canada’s Air Passenger Protection Regulations following its admission the airline “had clear failures” during the holiday travel season that left passengers stranded for days in destination or in Canadian airports, unable to fly to their destinations.
The Transport Minister has not said exactly what changes the government will propose to the APPR, or when such changes will be introduced.
In the aftermath of holiday travel chaos, the federal government’s Transport committee declared it would require the heads of Sunwing and VIA Rail to appear to explain their companies’ failures in service. Opposition MP’s also want the Transport Minister himself to be held accountable before the committee.
