Government looking to strengthen air passenger protection rules after holiday chaos, minister says | 24CA News

Transport Minister Omar Alghabra says he is trying to strengthen air passenger safety laws at a time of rising frustration with Canada’s airways.

Hundreds of travellers who used Sunwing to achieve heat locations over the vacation season discovered themselves stranded as a consequence of flight delays and cancellations. The airline attributed the delays to the foremost storm that a lot of Canada was coping with round Christmas.

Many passengers had been stranded for days as Sunwing tried to regulate its flights.

But passengers on different airways started experiencing flight disruptions as early because the spring, when demand for air journey started to return to pre-pandemic ranges.

Current laws require an airline to compensate passengers when a flight is delayed or cancelled for a cause that’s throughout the airline’s management. In instances of climate delays, airways are required to maintain passengers knowledgeable and rebook them. If they can not be rebooked inside 48 hours, the airline is required to supply a refund.

But the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) — a quasi-judicial tribunal and regulator tasked with settling disputes between airways and prospects — has been coping with a ballooning backlog of complaints from passengers who say they have been denied compensation.

In August, the backlog stood at 18,200 as complaints started flooding into the company. It spiked to greater than 30,000 complaints by the tip of November.

Alghabra instructed CBC Radio’s The House in an interview airing Saturday that the federal government is strengthening the principles in order that complaints towards airways are settled earlier than reaching the CTA.

“Last summer and this winter, we’ve seen certain examples where passengers felt they were not communicated with, their rights were not upheld,” he instructed host Catherine Cullen. “So we need to strengthen the rules.”

Alghabra did not go into element concerning the measures he’ll be . He did say he wish to see extra duty positioned on airways to compensate passengers earlier than they file complaints.

“Currently, it feels to many passengers that the burden is on them,” he stated. “We want to make sure we put rules in place to ensure that the burden is on the airline.”

The present guidelines got here into place in 2019, however air passenger rights knowledgeable Ian Jack stated a re-examination of the laws is nicely overdue.

“It’s about time that we hear this from the minister,” stated Jack, a spokesperson for the Canadian Automobile Association (CAA), a non-profit journey company.

“The regime has clearly had its problems since its inception.”

While the variety of complaints to the CTA has swelled over the previous few months, the company has been coping with a backlog of air passenger complaints for the reason that 2019 laws got here into place.

Sylvie De Bellefeuille, a lawyer with the Quebec-based advocacy group Option consommateurs, stated the backlog might be a lot bigger — however some passengers aren’t positive in the event that they’re owed compensation or do not feel they might obtain the cash they’re owed.

“They feel like it’s going to be a David against Goliath kind of situation, so a lot of people simply don’t request anything,” she stated.

CTA officers lately instructed a parliamentary committee that some complainants might be stored ready for his or her instances to be resolved for so long as 18 months.

Sunwing’s CEO Stephen Hunter and president Len Corrado issued an apology in an open letter on Thursday following the vacation journey debacle. They stated the corporate is accepting eligible claims for compensation.

But each Jack and De Bellefeuille stated passengers should not need to complain within the first place — that the principles must be modified to require extra proactive compensation from airways.

“Simplifying the regulations and making sure that people get compensated without having to ask — that may solve some of the issues,” De Bellefeuille stated.

“This won’t clear up all the problems that are out there, but a significant chunk of them are quite clear-cut cases. And so, why should people have to wait months, if not years, to get a response, to get their money in cases like that?” Jack stated.