On May 24, 2019 the government announced a set of rules. Prior to this being released, there was a draft released in December of 2018.
“Thousands of Canadians participated in the consultations that helped shape these new rules,” Scott Streiner, chair and CEO of the Canadian Transportation Agency, said in a statement. “We’re grateful for their input, and confident that these groundbreaking regulations will help ensure passengers are treated fairly if their air travel doesn’t go smoothly,”
However, these thousands of emails sent back by Canadians and/or to their MPs stating that the rules fell short of protecting the travellers were not considered at all. The Government ignored all these comments and concerns and went ahead with something slightly more airline-friendly than the December 2018 draft.
I saw a few US bloggers praise these new rules – but when you do a deep dive and see what little or almost no rights the passengers have, one wonders why the Government even bothered to solicit feedback from Canadians.
These new rules are portrayed as next best thing since sliced bread for Canadian travellers but they are in the interest of the airlines and not the travelling public. The new regulations announced Friday will be launched in two phases. Some regulations come into force on July 15, while others will not take effect until December 15 so as to not annoy the voting public before you cast your vote.
Make no mistake – these rules that are detrimental to Canadian travellers.
The Canadian standard for Tarmac delays has been 90 minutes since 2008 – but the new rules now make it standard at 3 hours – Someone please explain to me how making someone sit on a plane for 3hours is better than 1.5 hours with most likely no food or water – as it does say it will be provided “if possible”. Plus, there is a provision that it can even be extended to 3 hours and 45 minutes.
There is a big hoopla about the large compensation that will be paid out. But have you seen the fine print? You will be at the mercy of self disclosed delay reasons by the airlines and so out of luck in almost all situations.
These are touted as world leading rules – but truth be told, that Canada was behind, compared to Europe and these new rules have put us Canadians further behind. For e.g. if a delay occurs due to maintenance issues, there is no compensation. Wait!! What?!? Isn’t that the job of the airline to ensure the fleet is in good shape and thats why we paid for a ticket?
So what do we do now? Send a tweet to the Transport Minister and your local MP that these new rules are useless for the passengers as they support the airlines in wiggling out of paying compensation. Make it known that you will respond by how and who you will vote for.
For more details on this sad state of affairs, please like and follow updates by Dr Gabor Lukacs, an Air Passenger Rights Advocate at https://www.facebook.com/groups/AirPassengerRights/
Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash