Luggage piles up in the bag claim area at Toronto Pearson International Airport, as a major winter storm disrupted flights in and out of the airport, in Toronto, on Dec. 24, 2022.Cole Burston/The Canadian Press
Ken Rubin is a consumer advocate.
Airline passengers need all the consumer help they can get in their tough time navigating the bewildering maze of airline operations and regulations when seeking compensation for missed and delayed flights, damaged articles and more.
This is why the complaints process must involve capable advocate organizations, whose services are billed to airlines and governments. It would be akin to lawyers helping clients navigate the court’s Byzantine system – because this is what the complaints process has become.
Yes, some airline complainants already hire lawyers, and some disputes do end up in court. But such cases do not represent the vast majority, which have low stakes that do not justify the costs of legal representation, but which involve a complex process nonetheless and an asymmetrical power balance that does justify levelling the playing field.
And just to get this out of the way: I am on the board of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre, but I don’t reap any personal benefit from this plan, and I have no expectations that the centre would get hired over other groups such as Air Passenger Rights or Union des consommateurs – all these groups are capable of making a difference.
Think of this plan as an extension of what the federal regulator has proposed recently, which is a step in the right direction but not good enough.
With a back log of 78,000 airline passenger complaints, the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) has been told by Parliament that the airline industry now must help pay for processing those and future passenger complaints.
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In response, the CTA proposed a cost-recovery fee public consultation until Oct. 21, whereby the airlines would pay $790 per completed complaint to cover 60 per cent of CTA’s direct costs – largely resolution officers’ salaries and related expenses.
That will get them through adjudicating 22,615 complaints a year – at a whopping $30-million cost.
As expected, Andy Gibbons, WestJet’s VP of external affairs, is quoted as calling CTA’s proposed passenger complaints fees “a troubling disconnect” from reality. Air Canada spokesperson Peter Fitzpatrick as well thought it unfair that recovery charges be collected. Should they win, he would prefer costs’ rules like we have in courts where only the “loser” pays.
What the airlines don’t seem to appreciate is that this fee isn’t for punishment of airlines or feathering the nests of bureaucrats – it’s for consumer complaints to be addressed. That’s a rightful allocation for such funds.
But this cost-recovery proposal and a fully functioning CTA will not solve the fact that many consumers still cannot and will not be able to navigate the airline complaints system alone without the help of consumer advocates.
Recently, on a trip to B.C., my wife’s walker was damaged beyond repair by Air Canada. I knew from years of consumer protection work that the CTA’s air passenger protection regulations would not be the quickest or best place to start. So I spent the obligatory two-hour wait time for a phone call to Air Canada, then found the right claim portal, knowing I had seven filing days. Rest assured: I will be at Air Canada’s door if it does not send the requested compensation.
If that’s the trouble I go through, think of what others have to suffer.
Sometimes, consumers have gone the more expensive court route when they shouldn’t have. So, in a recent B.C. court decision, passengers identified as RA, SB and MB were awarded more than $2,000 instead of the $16 that WestJet offered them, because that’s how WestJet in its own wisdom interpreted the Air Passenger Protection Regulations. Considering the costs and exhaustiveness of the court process, that victory for the passengers seems a little hollow.
These are examples where consumer advocates could advise consumers on the right way to bring their complaint and to which body and when. But how to ensure that this happens?
The CTA’s funding does not pay for consumer groups’ representation or advice, which would enable consumers to get fair compensation and would make the CTA and other processes work more efficiently and humanely.
Ottawa is not really thinking about getting consumers fair deals.
In this case, it can help when dealing with airlines, whose tendency is to be unresponsive and secretive, to have regulations, agencies and online FAQs that provide some information and protection. But for real change, consumer power requires capable advocate organizations whose services have to be involved.
That will make flying less chancy and safer and not just based on the airlines’ bottom line and on governments’ tendency to be slack and slow.