Air Canada delayed a flight from Vancouver to Costa Rica for 24 hours in 2020. It took three years, but the Canadian Transportation Agency – which generally didn’t require the airline to offer refunds to customers even when an airline cancelled their flight during Covid – awarded two passengers who complained $1,000 each.
Six months later, Air Canada still hasn’t paid. Instead, they’re suing the passengers. As one of them put it,
We’re kind of numb. Leave us little folks alone. We really don’t want to be in this business of courts, or hundreds of pages of legal documents.
Canadian regulations have recently changed making it more likely for airlines to sue to overturn regulatory decisions against them.
- Since September 2023, the Canadian Transportation Agency has been able to hire complaints resolution officers to issue decisions on behalf of the agency. This speeds up the agency’s ability to process burgeoning claims – sitting at a backlog of 72,000 (in many ways airlines in Canada have been worse in recent years than they used to be – certainly in terms of operational performance as well as refusal to issue refunds).
- These changes also broadened the type of decisions that could be contested in court.
Air Canada says they shouldn’t have to pay because it was a weather delay. The CTA officer disagreed. The airline wants the courts to enforce a more generous standard for the airline in what lets them off the hook. Air Canada says the passengers won’t have to pay its legal fees.
Interestingly, the airline is suing the passengers and not the transportation agency. The agency has asked the court to participate in the case and Air Canada opposes this. They likely stand a better chance of winning and setting a precedent this way.
This is hardly the first time an airline has sued passengers who tried to enforce their legal rights. In 2021 won $8,200 against passengers that had sought EU261 delay compensation.
- When the passengers couldn’t get Finnair to pay compensation (Finnair blamed Airbus for issues with its new A350s and said it wasn’t responsible), the passengers turned their claim over to a third party – IfDelayed – to pursue the claim on their behalf and split proceeds.
- IfDelayed sued Finnair and lost.
- IfDelayed was ordered to pay Finnair’s legal expenses, and declared bankruptcy.
- Since Finnair couldn’t recover legal expenses from the company that sued them, they went after the passengers whose claims were at the root of the suit.
Finnair wanted the cost of its lawyers back. Air Canada is willing to spend on lawyers to establish a legal precedent against paying passengers based on an expansive definition of weather. None of this should be surprising at all.
If the case against Air Canada is strong and a significant payday for the passenger’s lawyers is possible, I hope a group of lawyers take on the fight.
And people say the US FFA is ineffective. Well they are What we need is some good ambulance chasing lawyers here with complaints who are judgement proof
One point, I’d like to make is that you have weather. That’s why you have spare aircraft and crews to compensate. Some airlines, like Air Canada fly everything including their spares during the peak season to make more money. At some point, a lot of delays can be traced to weather there is no redundancy. This is Air Canada we are talking about not a low cost carrier.
I have been delayed by weather from Cancun to Toronto. By a day.
On Air Canada.
My wife and I were treated well with an upgraded resort overnight.
And two breakfasts the next day.
One at hotel and a hot breakfast on board returning home.
I would like to see the weather report for that day which was the cause of the delay, along with know whether other airlines suffered similar delays. If it was a legitimate weather delay, then the airline should not have to pay compensation, if anything the passengers should be happy that the airline took the safe route. However, if it was a bogus delay then the airline should have to pay every passenger. I’ve seen too many flights get weather delayed in bright sunny skies while ground crew just happen to have the engine cowlings off.
Trash airline as always.
Yet another reason not to fly AC. Unfortunately I am on Finnair later this month – hopefully I will not need to file an EU 261 claim.
Dillon York is wrong- the US Future Farmers of America (FFA) is a strong and vital organization developing young leaders for our nation’s agricultural sector! (But it’s true that they don’t spend much energy regulating air travel.)
Just another reason, as if one needed another one, to not fly Air Canada.
All the airlines suck. Yes, even your favorite one. You think SQ is so good to pax? Think again. You think that your favorite domestic carrier is somehow superior to the others? (Come to think of it, nobody feels this way anymore).
The drive to make margins, to always grow grow grow have wrecked the industry. Same as at Boeing, just slightly differently, since nobody died (that we know of).
Blame wall street (a general concept, not *actual* Wall Street). I know. My brother worked in PE and no reinsurance and these are some of the most cutthroat people out there. They would make airline union negotiators blush.
I have some thoughts on solutions, but I fear that solutions will work themselves out despite anyone’s efforts to forestall the inevitable.
Invest in high speed railways.
AC isn’t suing all, or even most, of the passengers. There are exactly two and they are a couple.
They are being sued because AC cannot sue the CTA, which is immune from civil suits. Suing the passengers for return of the funds is intended to overcome the precedent.
The precedent of this decision that an airline is responsible for weather delays is immense for any airline, particularly one which operates in a harsh environment. And then there are climate change effects (ask Emirates).
Your clickbait headline doesn’t help.
@Boraxo be ready for a fight and also be aware that if you have to resort to the Finnish version of arbitration they will only do business in Finnish. Phone calls, emails, letter’s. If it’s not in Finnish then they won’t talk to you or read it. They suggest you hire an interpreter for a conference call if you don’t speak Finnish.
After 14 changes in the 10 months since booking including moving the return back 16 hours and overnight ( incurring a night in a hotel and meal / drinks costs) done the night before EC261 would’ve applied, we were already in Thailand at that time. AY refused to even cover those extra costs despite us having twice accepted rerouting of their choosing and benefit on top of all the other changes.
I found myself wondering just how independent and unconnected their gov arbitrator actually was and ended up just going to the UK courts to make a claim & having AY served papers at their office at LHR.
I truly hope it all goes smoothly but forewarned is forearmed and all that. AY are generally a good carrier tbh but if it goes wrong and they decide to ignore you then strap in for a fight.
When you fly AC, everything seems really nice (at least when you’re an American and are used to our domestic offerings). The planes seem clean, the catering seems decent (better than nothing) and the crews are polite. However when things go even the slightest bit wrong, AC’s douchey side comes out in full force. They can be truly nasty and leave you hanging without a second thought. So bad, that they make AA look like SQ when it comes to this.
Frankly, AC is kind of a metaphor for Canada in general: seems really nice and friendly on the surface but pretty rotten underneath.
What’s up with Air Canada?
P.S. Canada is a much nicer place to live than the US. Really.
I had a BA flight from LHR to JNB delayd so much the connection to DUR wasn’t possible. I ended up renting a car and driving 600 kilometers to Durban.
It took over a year and a plethora of increasingly angry emails to get paid the $600.00 out of pocket expenses. Not once, not twice but three times BA told me that they had “raised a cheque.” No cheque arrived. In the end the needed my banking information and deposited the money into my bank account.
Not sure why they lied about “raising cheques,” also not sure it eas worth 13 months of angry emails to get the money, but in the end they paid.
Why would any sane passenger sue because the airline was delayed because of weather??
Seriously did they want the pilots to fly and have a weather related crash?? Idiots.
I hope they have to pay legal fees. Let the pilots do their job and keep everyone safe. SMH
@ch: “P.S. Canada is a much nicer place to live than the US. Really.”
Well, unless you live in a ghetto part of the US – then no. Your taxes are stifling, your laws are draconian, your health care is much like your people; looks great but is merely a thin veneer. And your crime is on the upswing. Stuff like burglary is more prevalent in many Canadian suburbs than American ones. And, oh yeah, a much higher percentage of you have to live in apartments or attached townhouses because your economy and cost of living don’t permit you to ever afford a detached house unless you’re rich or live out in the boonies. And, oh yeah, you have Quebec who hates your Anglophone guts and who is so rude that they give the French in Paris a bad name.
Really.
And Trudeau’s Carbon Tax was a swell idea…says my son temporarily living in Nova Scotia for his employer. Not!
An excellent business strategy: sue your customers. Makes me want to use them.
Air Canada is a national embarrassment.
> P.S. Canada is a much nicer place to live than the US. Really.
A whole bunch of truckers couldn’t be reached for comment.
Hi,
American living in Vancouver here since my kids were born. SeaTac is my airport. Scare Canada and Worstjet make US based airlines look like emirates or Singapore in comparison. A WestJet agent in Mexico once tried to extract a bribe from me and even called over this scary looking soldier to scare me into paying or go to a notorious prison in Guadalajara. The soldier ended up taking my side. When I wrote to westjet they blamed me and threatened to ban me. YVR has terrible dining options past security. Bags frequently get lost and always take at least 45 minutes to an hour to come out. Flights from there usually cost double what they do in Seattle. The second my kids are old enough to drive I’m headed back to Washington. In Vancouver 2 million buys you a tear down and you don’t even get to write off interest. Mortgages are all variable. What Canadians call a fixed mortgage is one that adjusts every 5 years. Everything costs at least double what it does in Washington. Even food necessities are incredibly expensive. Also the quality of everything is worse and customer service is universally terrible. Canadians spend many of their weekends and holidays traveling to the US to buy cheese and chicken and gas. Canada seems nice but underneath it is rotten to the core.
Just because it may be sunny when you start your travels at home or when you leave a sunny island holiday, doesn’t mean there won’t be inclement weather during the flight to the final destination that could be a risk. This is not something new. Hurricanes on the east coast or around the islands down south, snow storms that shut down cities and airports, severe electrical storms, etc. All airlines weigh the risks and the outcome is unfortunately to cancel the flight.
This was not simply a case of Air Canada having bad weather and cancelling a flight.
It’s that bad weather earlier in the day and throughout the network caused rolling delays and cancellations elsewhere.
This is not a safety concern, but poor operational planning.
AC is a business and they made a business decision to fly everything at 100% instead of having pilot’s, flight attendants and even aircraft on reserve.
oh, Caannnadaaa