Passenger warns of unwarranted high baggage fee collected through Air Canada booking

The value of flying has gone up, nevertheless it hasn’t deterred some Canadians from taking a well-needed trip. And whereas we would do our greatest to finances for the journey, an unexpected expense can at all times be thrown your means. But what in case you have been made to pay extra for one thing than the worth you have been initially quoted? 

A irritating expertise echoed by Siju Varghese after he was made to pay an unexpectedly excessive baggage payment when boarding the primary leg of his return flight residence to Canada.

“Why am I being charged so much in baggage fees when the ticket says it was $75 dollars?” Varghese tells CityNews.

In January, he and his journey companion boarded a flight in Edmonton. The itinerary, booked via Air Canada, included connecting flights via Toronto and Bogota, with a remaining vacation spot in Quito, Ecuador.

On his means there, his Aeroplan card lined the fee for each items of checked baggage. But on the return leg, when checking in for his or her first flight with Avianca Ecuador, an interline companion of Air Canada, Varghese was informed every bag may very well be checked in for a payment of $170 USD.

“They confirmed me on their system that Air Canada is saying that they should cost me a baggage payment,” he defined. “I told them, here is my Air Canada ticket. It shows that my baggage fee should be $75 dollars at the most. They said they can’t help me. That its Air Canada’s baggage fee that they are seeing on their system.”

After being suggested to dispute the cost immediately with Air Canada and having known as their customer support line that indicated a 4 hour maintain time, Varghese determined to pay the $340 USD and resolve the difficulty upon his return residence. 

While connecting via Toronto he spoke to an Air Canada worker who informed the Alberta resident that he must dispute the payment with Avianca. 

“When I bought again to Edmonton, I despatched an e-mail to Air Canada saying it doesn’t matter who charged the payment. All that issues is that I’ve a ticket issued by you, Air Canada, and on the ticket it states $75 {dollars}. I used to be shocked to come back to the airport and see a cost of $170 USD per bag,” Varghese tells CityNews, including that he included the Canadian Transport Agency’s part on interline baggage charges.

Interline flights are an association between carriers reserving passengers on a single itinerary that makes use of a number of airways. The added comfort is just not having to buy a number of tickets in addition to having a streamline method to your checked baggage, because it’s transferred between these airways en path to your remaining vacation spot.

But as a part of that settlement, the Canadian Transport Agency’s guidelines state that these carriers are anticipated to use a single set of bags guidelines to all the itinerary, together with the title of the service whose baggage guidelines apply.

This is to not be confused with a codeshare flight, an association during which one airline sells seats on a flight operated by one other airline. In this case, the luggage guidelines of the airline working that flight will apply and must be indicated in your ticket.

Just a few weeks later Varghese acquired a response from Air Canada.

“Unfortunately, we cannot refund any fees collected by another carrier. As Avianca is one of our Star Alliance members, I have forwarded your concerns for their review. They have since responded that they will not be issuing the refund. Please note that the decision of the operating carrier, in this instance Avianca, is final”, reads the e-mail from a customer support agent. They additionally referred Varghese to a web page on their web site that shows the right way to affirm in case your itinerary features a codeshare or interline flight and what baggage guidelines apply.

They as a substitute supplied him a $350 ecoupon as a “gesture of goodwill.”

CityNews reached out to Air Canada questioning why the interline baggage guidelines from the CTA didn’t apply on this case.

“It seems that on this occasion our companion service didn’t appropriately interpret the itinerary receipt, we are going to observe up with them however within the meantime refund the shopper,” writes their media relations staff in an e-mail.

While the Canadian Transport Agency mentioned they may not touch upon this particular case, they did state an airline may face Administrative Monetary Penalties in respect of its failure to use its tariff.

“If the CTA finds that the airline has did not correctly apply the phrases and situations that apply to the passenger’s ticket, it could actually order the airline to take the corrective measures that it considers acceptable or to pay compensation for the bills incurred by a passenger,” says Martine Maltais of CTA’s media staff, in relation to a direct criticism to their company by a passenger.

As of March 20, the rising backlog of air passenger complaints sits at 42,000 with greater than 1,500 complaints associated to baggage alone.

Gabor Lukacs, president of the Air Passenger Rights advocacy group, says wrongfully collected baggage charges via interline bookings is a matter he’s heard earlier than however that it’s half of a bigger systemic downside in relation to Canada’s Air Passenger Protection Regulations, rooted in lack of enforcement.

“The system is in-built a means the place now we have guidelines, however we don’t have enforcement,” says Lukacs.

He’s hopeful {that a} personal member’s invoice launched by NDP transport critic Taylor Bachrach in March, accompanied with a parliamentary petition, will enact optimistic change via a listing of 21 suggestions that embrace closing present loopholes.

“The air passenger protection regulations are regulations that are built on a framework that are part of the Canada Transportation Agency. It’s the framework which is broken, not just the APPR,” he maintains. “What bill C-327 does is fix the framework so it matches the European Union’s gold standard in a number of key areas”.

If the Canadian Transportation Agency have been to find out {that a} passenger’s rights have been infringed, all passengers on that very same flight must be contacted and supplied refunds or compensation, based mostly on the home committee report, primarily benefiting each passengers who train their rights and people who may not bear in mind that their rights have been violated.

“This is occurring to numerous folks,” says Varghese, who provides he has seen others sharing related tales on social media. He’s hopeful that by telling his story, it attracts consideration to the difficulty of unwarranted excessive baggage charges being collected by massive carriers via some of these bookings.

Air Canada has since reached out to Varghese providing him solely $100 out of the $310 further Canadian {dollars} he was made to pay to verify in his baggage.

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