Vera Mencarini tried for hours to reach Air Canada on Aug. 17 after it informed her that her flight from Rome to Ottawa that day was cancelled due to a flight attendant strike.
When she finally got a text message telling her the airline couldn’t rebook her flight within three days, she realized she was on her own.
“But we need to go home, like, I’m by myself with three kids,” she said.
The search for another flight was “frantic and frustrating,” Mencarini said, but she finally booked an Air Transat flight to Montreal — not her final destination of Ottawa — that left six days later. The next challenge was finding a hotel “in the middle of the most (touristic) month in Rome.”
“We drained our account,” she said.
Nearly three months since a flight attendant strike at Air Canada led to flight cancellations for more than 500,000 travellers, many customers are still waiting on the airline to reimburse or compensate them. Some passengers have yet to receive compensation that the airline appears to be legally obligated to pay.
Air Canada maintains it has not broken any laws or regulations.
On Sept. 5, Mencarini submitted claims to recoup the cost of the flights and accommodations, plus 600 Euros per passenger, which she believes she is entitled to under EU Regulation 261, which covers flights from European Union Member Countries.
After following up with Air Canada “almost every day” about her claims, she’s expecting her final payment in the next month.
The airline’s press release about its “goodwill policy” said it would reimburse “reasonable” out-of-pocket expenses within four to six weeks and that its “flexible rebooking policy” would cover alternative flight costs.
While Canada’s Air Passenger Protection Regulations (APPR) don’t entitle passengers to lump-sum compensation or reimbursement for expenses during a strike, an event that is considered out of the airline’s control in Canada, a passenger rights advocate and aviation management expert the Star spoke with say Air Canada is legally obligated to pay lump-sum compensation to some international travellers under Europe’s Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 and to cover certain expenses, including lost wages, under the Montreal Convention.
Additionally, experts say the APPR always requires airlines to rebook passengers within 48 hours or on the next available flight with any carrier, or to refund them for their cancelled flight, even though a strike is considered out of the airline’s control.
They also say that in cases where Air Canada did not book alternative flights for travellers, took more than 30 days to respond to claims, or did not recognize legitimate claims under international regulations, the airline broke the law.
The Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA), which says it has received 3,775 complaints against Air Canada regarding flight disruptions since Aug. 11, told the Star it is investigating the airline. If it finds a violation, it could issue monetary penalties.
But experts say lax enforcement of passenger rights laws in Canada are partly to blame for passengers’ troubles, and they believe it would take hefty penalties to change the airline’s behaviour.
Reimbursements to cost $90 million
Air Canada told the Star it “abides by the laws and regulations of the jurisdictions in which it operates and is an upstanding corporate citizen.”
It emphasized that under APPR, “in the event of a labour disruption, there is no compensation due because the Act deems a labour disruption to be an event outside the carrier’s control.” But the company nevertheless offers customers with cancelled flights a full refund or the option to be rebooked if available.
Since its voluntary goodwill policy is not required by law, those claims don’t require a 30-day response window, it said, and “it is simply false” that the airline broke the law by failing to rebook some passengers because the APPR recognizes and makes provisions “for the fact there is a possibility airlines may not be able to rebook customers.”
The airline added that it “did rebook tens of thousands of customers during the strike.”
On an earnings call last week, Air Canada executives said the company’s goodwill policy received more than 150,000 claims, and the company will pay strike-related customer compensation in the fourth quarter. They added that reimbursements would cost $90 million.
Gabor Lukacs, founder of non-profit advocacy organization Air Passenger Rights, said since the CTA can fine the airline up to $25,000 per claim, he believes it should fine Air Canada some $50 million in damages for failing to rebook passengers as a “meaningful warning” that breaking Canadian law “has profit-altering consequences.” To date, no fines have been issued in relation to the strike, he said.
John Gradek, a lecturer on aviation management at McGill University, said the CTA rarely issues fines, and in the event it does, charges end up being “mere pittances” of about $250 per passenger.
If airlines received the maximum fine for continuous breaches, their behaviour “would change instantaneously,” he argued.
The CTA says it “has been gathering and reviewing evidence to verify whether Air Canada met all requirements stipulated in the applicable laws and regulations pertaining to (the labour disruption).”
The CTA has a backlog of about 87,000 cases. If it is made aware of an incident, however, “even if a complaint is not filed with it,” its enforcement team may conduct a full investigation.
‘We drained our account’
Johnny McClue spent five extra days in Toronto after Air Canada cancelled the flight he and his son were booked on to get home to Scotland on Aug. 20, and his attempts to reach the airline were met with “radio silence.”
He says the airline didn’t get in touch with him at all about rebooking his flight, and he only managed to rebook after several failed attempts at calling the airline and finally speaking with a supervisor at the airport.
While he chose not to claim out-of-pocket expenses, he says he filed a claim for unpaid wages under the Montreal Convention, sending Air Canada customer service and executives a lengthy email with evidence.
Within three days he was given a reference number, but about six weeks passed before Air Canada said it could not offer him compensation under the APPR. The email, which the Star viewed, did not address the Montreal Convention.
“It’s disappointing,” McClue said. “I’m not trying to get money out of Air Canada. I’m simply trying to get, under my own rights, what I’m owed due to loss of earnings.”
Brett Morris’s nightmare began when he found out his Air Canada flight was cancelled due to a flight attendant strike.
He spent two restless days in a Dublin hotel room with his wife and two teens trying to reach Air Canada before an agent finally got back to him to help rebook his cancelled Aug. 18 flight to Toronto.
The agent offered them an Aug. 23 indirect flight home, but Morris later found a direct flight that departed two days earlier on his own, and the airline booked that instead.
When he got back to Toronto, Morris made a claim with Air Canada for the out-of-pocket expenses he incurred and sought compensation for the fact that the flight was cancelled and he and his wife missed days of work.
Two months later, Air Canada reimbursed him for most of his expenses, but he never heard back from the airline about 600 Euros in compensation that each of the travellers would be entitled to under European regulations, or for lost wages he and his wife claimed under the Montreal Convention.
Despite this, Air Canada says on its website his case is “resolved.”
“It appears I will have to take them to small claims court to recoup the rest of the money owed to me,” he said.
In Mencarini’s case, she has slowly been recouping the money she spent during her extended stay in Rome.
On Sept. 5, she claimed reimbursement for the roughly $6,000 she spent on the flights, plus another roughly $2,500 for money spent on accommodations and 600 Euros per passenger.
Between the end of September and the end of October, she received a refund for the cancelled flight, plus the European compensation. On Oct. 24, the airline said she would be reimbursed the difference — about $2,800 — in four to six weeks, a timeline she called “ridiculous.”
She didn’t hear back about her accommodation costs until Nov. 12, when the airline emailed her saying it would offer her “a total reimbursement” of about $3,760 within four weeks. If that includes the aforementioned travel reimbursement, which remains unclear to Mencarini, then she will still be out about $1,000 for accommodations.
After the months-long back-and-forth, Mencarini says she’ll never travel with Air Canada again if she can help it.
Most claims closed, airline says
Air Canada says it has closed 98 per cent of claims it has received, and it has paid compensation for flights originating in the UK and EU, and “most, if not all, of those claims have been settled.”
“Throughout this unprecedented situation, we have asked for our customers’ patience. This was both during the disruption, when hundreds of thousands of customers were being affected, and afterward, as there was a very large number of claims, more than 150,000 (twice the CTA’s current backlog), to evaluate, many of which were complex, requiring document review and sometimes follow up discussions with customers,” a spokesperson said in an email.
“While customers were understandably eager to be rebooked, and we made best efforts to do so, in many, many cases there was simply no spare capacity across the industry because it was the peak of the summer travel season.
“Also, to satisfy the requirements of APPR, the itineraries that our systems are designed to select for impacted customers must be reasonably comparable to their original itineraries,” the spokesperson said.
Whether or not Air Canada did break the law during the strike is a question that will be answered in small claims court or at the CTA, but it’s not clear yet when passengers may get answers.
