The Federal government has just announced a bailout package for the airline, with $1.4 billion earmarked for refunds but is this reason for all affected passengers to do a happy dance?
Lets dig deep and see if there is more than meets the eye – (spoiler alert) as there usually always is.
It states that refunds are available for all booked flights cancelled – either by the airline or the passenger for any reason – since February 01, 2020 if these were purchased before April 13, 2021. It covers both tickets and Air Canada vacation packages. So far so good….
So whats the process?
Well, you have to go online at Get your refund started and submit a request. If it was purchased through a travel agent, you cannot do it online, and you have to go through the travel agent. And heres the kicker – the refund will exclude the sales commission paid to travel agencies. If the travel agency is no longer in existence, you can call Air Canada Reservations who will verify that the agency has indeed closed down and then process the refund for you. And this call centre appears to be in Tampa FL instead of providing jobs in Canada?
Now this begs the question – why this slight nuance? Why not allow all all passengers to do it online by skipping the travel agency. Better still, why not do it automatically? You have all the details of the reservations and payment method used. Just get your IT to run a report and refund accordingly.
When you start the refund process, you arrive at this page
You then select one of these two options:
and then fill in your details to submit your request as below
So, in essence if you received an Air Canada Travel Voucher, eCoupon or Aeroplan Points, you can apply for a refund to the original form of payment. Which means the Air Canada Travel Voucher or eCoupon will be revoked and Aeroplan Points provided earlier will be clawed back and if you do not have the required amount of Aeroplan Points in your account i.e. if there is an insufficient number of Aeroplan points remaining in your account to complete the transaction, that request will not be processed and subsequently will be cancelled. Fair enough as you cannot double dip.
Now, if you didnt get any refund earlier, it seems to be a shorter process to apply
But Wait!! Theres more. Refunds may take upto three months!! So, Air Canada is earning interest on $1.4 billion of government funds?
Refund requests are being prioritized by flight date. You can find out which period is currently being handled by the Refund Team by visiting aircanada.com/contactus. Right now it shows that Air Canada os currently processing refund requests for flights up to February 16, 2020.
Lately we have been hearing reports of travellers unable to fill in the online form as its either not recognising the reference number or saying that you no-showed when the flight clearly did not operate. These travellers were able to proceed with their request after calling in.
Additionally, since bookings made through travel agents need to come through the travel agencies, we hear the travel agents are tacking on admin fees to process these refunds and are asking travellers for their credit card details to charge this fee upfront before processing these refunds.
We have seen some travellers call Expedia and they are being told that they heard about the air Canada update but it is not on their systems and as such they will not process the refund.
Some points to keep in mind which are good actually are:
– If you were denied or declined a refund earlier – you may now be eligible for a refund by applying online.
– Note that the credit will go to the original credit that was used – if you no longer have that card, you will need to contact your card issuer to have the credit transferred to the current card or request a cheque for the amount. (Hope this wont mess up any welcome bonuses if this was a new card at the time.)
– If you received a partial refund that did not match the complete value of the ticket purchased – you may now be eligible for a refund by applying online.
– Its not clear how you can get Airmiles or other non airline loyalty points that were used as payment.
Air Canada its not impressive that you are making passengers jump through hoops when you didnt have to fill in forms and wait upto three months to get your total $5.9 billion package including the $1.4 billion for refunds. In this day and age, as I mentioned above, its easy for your IT department to run a list of bookings, fare paid, method of payment used and process an automated refund.
O Air Canada – Will we ever see our money again?
Written by Dominic Fernandes aka CanadaPointsGuy.
Image Photo by David Preston on Unsplash
Excellent article
There is no “kicker”. Everyone concerned will receive a full refund. How you ever interpreted that the client receives a NET refund (less agents commission) is absurd. You should be ashamed of yourself for spreading fake news.
This statement on based on first hand information from a few passengers that I have spoken to who mentioned that the agent is asking for a processing fee to initiate the refund process. I have seen the email communication from the travel agent.