Despite promises from Ottawa and a ballooning budget from the feds, the backlog of air pax complaints to the Canadian Transportation Agency hasn't decreased. In fact, it's reached a new record.
Published reports say there are now more than 71,000 complaints on file with the CTA, the most there's ever been.
“Wow. It’s really become a crisis,” John Lawford, executive director of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, told the Toronto Star.
The CTA, a quasi-judicial regulator and tribunal tasked with settling disputes between customers and the airlines, says the backlog is growing because the number of incoming complaints keeps increasing, CTV News reports.
Last fiscal year, 43,549 passenger complaints were filed with the CTA. Another 3,291 rolled in between 1APR and 25APR of this year.
The CTA has been dealing with a backlog of air passenger complaints since new regulations were introduced in 2019, according to the CBC and Yahoo News.
Those regulations require an airline to compensate pax when a flight is delayed or cancelled for a reason that is within the airline's control. Passengers who believe they've been unfairly denied compensation by an airline can take their case to the CTA.
"The size of the backlog depends not only on the number of cases we close, but the number of complaints submitted, and that is very high," Tom Oommen, Director General of the Analysis and Outreach Branch at the Canadian Transportation Agency, told CTV.
The Trudeau government last year set aside $76 million over three years to help the CTA clear its growing backlog of complaints. It also introduced new airline regulations that were supposed to streamline the complaint process, reduce the backlog, and motivate airlines to resolve complaints outside the CTA process.
“Eliminating the backlog is our top priority at the agency,” Oommen told the Star. “We will get to every complaint, and we will eliminate the backlog.”
“The CTA has an important role to play in enforcing these regulations, and that’s why we invested $76 million to help them streamline the process, hire 200 more employees and get the job done,” said transportation ministry spokesperson Laura Scaffidi.
