In Canada, strikes and labour disruptions are considered out of the airline’s control, so travellers wouldn’t get money to cover additional costs or make up for the pain of missing a trip.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press
The Air Transat labour dispute offers insights into the sorry state of Canada’s air passenger protection rules.
If the pilot strike hadn’t been averted, travellers with a flight departing from the EU or Britain who had their flight cancelled would have been entitled to compensation under EU rules between $402 and $966, in addition to a rebooking of their flight or a refund on the unused portion of their tickets. Meals and hotel stays are often covered.
However, for a flight departing from Canada, where Canadian air passenger rules are in effect, strikes and labour disruptions would have been considered out of the airline’s control. Travellers would have still been entitled to rebooking or a refund, but wouldn’t get money to cover additional costs or make up for the pain of missing a destination wedding or delaying a dream vacation.
If the Canadian regulator wanted to give compensation for labour disputes – something that would please unions, as it would give them more leverage – they would face long odds, given that a previous set of proposed reforms has stalled.
Last December, the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA), the regulator that resolves air travel complaints, proposed new regulations that would clarify the rules and narrow some exemptions. But a year later, amidst heavy lobbying from the airline industry, the reforms are still stuck on the tarmac. Similarly, a Parliamentary order in June, 2023, saying that airlines should pay part of the cost of the complaint resolution process – with a fee the CTA proposed as being $790 per eligible complaint – has gone nowhere.
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Canada’s consumer protection system for air passengers is overly complicated, with many exemptions that allow airlines to avoid paying compensation for delays and cancellations. Poorly defined rules leave passengers unsure of what to do. For example, it’s unclear if passengers who had their flights cancelled by Air Transat in anticipation of the strike would receive compensation. The convoluted system makes processing complaints slow and costly.
As a result, the backlog at the CTA has soared to 88,000 complaints. This was despite a boost in funding from the federal government by $75.9-million in 2023 – even with increased resources and an attempt to streamline its processes, the agency has been swamped by a soaring number of new complaints. Passenger advocates say complainants can wait two years before a resolution.
The current travel passenger regulations were launched in 2019 to address poor treatment from airlines for customers faced with tarmac delays, bumping, lost luggage, flight cancellations and other issues. The creation of standard rules has helped somewhat, but Canada is still far from achieving the Trudeau government’s aim of creating a fair and predictable system for air passengers.
There are too many exclusions allowing airlines to deny compensation. For instance, advocates have raised concerns that airlines are misusing a rule allowing them to avoid paying compensation when delays and cancellations are made for safety reasons.
The current system gives airlines little incentive to do the right thing and voluntarily pay passengers who deserve compensation. Unhappy passengers get stuck in the complaints system for years and may give up, saving the airlines money. After the CTA issues a decision, the passenger can’t openly share the details unless the airline agrees, meaning they can’t complain to the media and other passengers can’t get information on how similar cases were decided. Fines for airlines who don’t treat passengers well are rare.
It doesn’t help that in the past two years, Canada has had four different transportation ministers, and the government’s attention has shifted to other priorities. Hopefully the new Transportation Minister, Steven MacKinnon, will shift his focus back to this issue.
The answer isn’t just to throw more money at the problem by giving the CTA more resources to deal with the backlog. It’s time to reform the rules to make the system simpler so claims are easier to process.
A properly designed process that isn’t weighed down by ambiguous exemptions will help correct the power imbalance between consumers and airlines. It will also encourage the carriers to deal with issues pro-actively, so there will be no need to go through the complaints process in the first place. The reforms need to move forward without further delay.