As some airlines refuse compensation for delayed flights or missing luggage, several Canadian travelers are taking their claims to court.
Edmonton resident Curtis Altmix said he was booked to fly to Toronto with his wife and three nephews on a June 6 WestJet flight originally scheduled to depart at 1 a.m. He told CTVNews.ca that after passengers had finished boarding around 2 a.m., the pilot announced that his co-pilot was too tired to fly and the flight was canceled.
“It was really disappointing,” Altmix said in a phone interview with CTVNews.ca on Tuesday. “They had no ground staff. They didn’t provide us with anything and just left us out on our own.”
His flight was booked for the next morning at 9:40 a.m., but it was delayed again, he said. Altmick said the plane took off around 11:15 a.m. — more than 10 hours after the original scheduled flight.
Under the Canadian Transportation Agency’s (CTA) Air Passenger Protection Regulations (APPR), major airlines are required to provide $1,000 in compensation if the delay was within their control and the duration of the delay is nine hours or more.
Altmix says its claim for compensation was denied on safety grounds. Under the APPR, airlines are allowed to refuse compensation if the delay is for safety reasons, even if the situation is within the airline’s control.
That’s why Altmiks is taking WestJet to small claims court. He argued that the pilot being too tired to fly was a staffing issue that the airline should have planned for, not a safety issue.
Taking the airline to small claims court is also what the advocacy group Air Passenger Rights recommends if a claim for compensation is ignored or denied.
“The compensation owed to you under the Air Passenger Protection Rules is essentially a type of debt, nothing fundamentally different,” Air Passenger Rights President Gabor Lukacs told CTV’s Your Morning on Tuesday. “If (passengers) take it to small claims court and show evidence, the court will order the airline to pay.”
In other cases, both WestJet and Air Canada have denied compensation based on staff shortages. However, the CTA told The Canadian Press that crew shortages should not constitute a “safety issue” and therefore should not exempt airlines from offering compensation.
Some travelers have also gone to small claims court to seek compensation for lost or delayed baggage.
Surrey, British Columbia resident Simon Crimp said he hasn’t heard anything from Air Canada more than 30 days after he submitted his lost baggage claim. His luggage went missing more than a month after a flight from Vancouver to London on June 3. Crimp said he also filed a complaint with the CTA, but hasn’t heard anything back from the agency.
“I’ve had enough of waiting, of being frustrated, to get answers from anyone. No feedback. So I just decided to go to small claims court,” he told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview Tuesday.
Tom Oumen, director general of analytics and outreach at the CTA, told The Canadian Press that the agency is currently facing severe staffing shortages and is trying to hire more assistants who can help resolve customer complaints against the airlines. As of May, the agency had a backlog of more than 15,300 complaints, and Oommen said it can take up to a year for a complaint to reach an agency facilitator.
For lost and delayed bags, airlines are required to compensate up to about $2,300 per passenger per bag for all “reasonable” expenses incurred, such as intermediate purchases to replace missing clothing and other essential items, under the Montreal Convention.
After Crimp sued in small claims court, he said Air Canada called him a few days later to settle, offering $1,187 to cover interim expenses for him and his son, as well as a refund of court fees and a 20 percent discount code for a future flight. However, Crimp says he is not happy with the proposal.
“I want compensation … for the added stress and inconvenience of not having our bag for over a month. It’s certainly not unreasonable to be quite honest,” he said.
The CTA has not levied any fines against airlines for denying compensation, but Lukacs wants to see stricter enforcement of the rules.
“We have to have proper enforcement,” he said. “The Canadian Transport Agency needs to start imposing hefty fines on airlines that break the law so that it is not profitable for the airlines to put up the door.”
With files from The Canadian Press
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