With many people returning home from holiday travel and getting back to work, friends and neighbours are starting to share their first-hand stories of flight nightmares, dominating headlines as of late.
Air Passenger Rights advocate Gabor Lukacs says: don’t let the inconvenience you incurred stay a story. In many cases you are entitled to compensation.
“It’s not just about the money,” he says.
“It’s about shaping what air travel will look like. It is about behaviour modification.”
Even if you are reunited with a lost bag, Canadian law requires airlines to at least partially reimburse you for any money you had to spend replacing items in your luggage. In many cases, up to $2,300.
It’s a similar situation if you as a passenger face delays at the fault of the airline, not related to safety — contingent on the size of the airline and length of your delay.
If you are delayed from three to six hours, you’re entailed to $400 compensation from a large airline of $125 from a small one.
Delays from six to nine hours yield compensation of $700 from large and $250 from small.
Delays exceeding nine hours see a passenger entitled to $1,000 compensation from large airlines and $500 from small.
There are also options for reimbursement for expenses incurred due to delays – such as hotel stays or an extra day of pet sitting.
“Don’t leave that money on the table,” Lukacs says.
He advises that those who face delayed flights or lost luggage keep all related receipts and send them to the airline.
“Remove all emotions. Don't talk about nightmares, talk about what expenses you incurred. These are the actual expenses incurred because of the delay and tell the airline to pay up within 30 days. On day 31, file the small claims court papers,” advises Lukacs.
He says small claims court is a better option than pursuing a claim through the Ministry of Transportation for two reasons:
- Airlines seem to be given the benefit of the doubt by government, he says,
- The Ministry is currently working through a backlog of thousands of complaints.
Lukacs says, if enough scorned passengers send written notice directly to airlines, the companies won’t want to let things go to court.
“Especially airlines like Sunwing, after they get served with at least 100 small claims courts cases they're going to start scratching their head and thinking ‘okay, perhaps we need to settle these because they don't have the resources to handle that many cases,’” he says.
Through Air Passenger Rights, Lukacs says he wants to draw attention to changes he says need to be made to passenger protection regulations.
A 29-page report they put out just before Christmas makes five recommendations:
- Establish simple criteria for automatic standardized compensation of passengers for flight delay, flight cancellation, and denial of boarding.
- Impose a clear burden of proof on airlines to present evidence about the circumstances of a travel disruption.
- Establish common sense definitions for “flight cancellation” and “denial of boarding.”
- Codify the right to a refund in the original form of payment of the itinerary if the passenger chooses not to travel due to a flight’s cancellation, delay, or denial of boarding by the airline.
- Impose enforcement measures that include mandatory and minimum penalties, and higher maximum penalties
“Passengers can go through all this to work to right wrongs, but should they have to?” Lukacs.
