It’s Bruce Hood who must be turning in his grave. Famous referee of the National Hockey League, he had flown to the defense of travelers, in 2000, by becoming the very first commissioner of complaints relating to air transport.
With his colorful style, he was not shy about spreading in his reports the nightmares experienced by passengers… a little too much for the taste of carriers, who had to open the champagne when his position was abolished after only a few years.
Today, this position is sorely lacking.
More than ever, we need an arbitrator with teeth to handle the complaints of travelers who reach a stratospheric level.
With the saga of reimbursement for flights canceled during the pandemic and the chaotic resumption of travel last summer, a record number of 34,000 complaints are piling up on the desk of the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA). And that’s not even counting the complaints that will be added with the setbacks experienced during the holiday season.
Fasten your seatbelt: a traveler must now wait 18 months between the time they submit their case to the CTA and the time their complaint is examined. This totally unreasonable wait is fueling public cynicism about a complaints processing system that is bogged down to the neck.
Some aggrieved travelers are turning to small claims, overloading the courts, while others are dropping their war-weary claims.
As customers are forced to struggle to get the compensation they are entitled to, air carriers can make it rain or shine.
This is all the more true since the OTC does not hit them very hard on the fingers. Since the entry into force in 2019 of the Air Passenger Protection Regulations (RPPA), also known as the Travelers Charter, it imposed a mere $229,300 in administrative monetary penalties on the entire industry.
In other words, nothing at all! For carriers, it is less costly to pay the rare fines than to comply with the APPR.
That’s how you end up with passengers stuck on the tarmac for hours, travelers stuck abroad for days, customers forced to sleep on the airport floor… All that in the greatest disregard for the rules supposedly in force.
Last Thursday, at an emergency meeting of the Standing Committee on Transport in the House of Commons, four consumer organizations said in unison that the passenger charter is a failure.
Travelers deserve better. They have the right to a real referee.
Ottawa should create an agency dedicated entirely to traveler complaints. A down to earth and agile organization, well known to all and easily accessible to the general public.
In telecoms, aggrieved consumers can turn to the Commissioner for Complaints for Telecommunications Services (CCTS). In financial services, customers can knock on the door of the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments (OBSI) even though the Harper government has unfortunately clipped its wings.
Logically, the transportation sector, a veritable pet peeve of consumers, should also have a complaints handling service worthy of the name, whether it be an ombudsman or a commissioner. The important thing is that the organization has a truly independent board of directors, sheltered from the transport lobby, and that it has the means to act.
Because there is also the problem. Currently, the CTO is underfunded. When the travelers’ charter was launched, Ottawa granted it an additional budget to manage new complaints. A special envelope of 11 million has been renewed for the financial year which ends next March. And after ? We remain in the fog. One thing is certain, however, it would be the worst time to cut off supplies.
But, on its own, the creation of an arbitrator is not the miracle solution to all problems. If we want to clean up the air transport industry, it is essential to strengthen the passenger charter, the complexity of which is enough to make the most studious consumer lose his bearings.
This complexity means that travelers do not claim their due because they do not know their rights. And it leaves too much leeway for the airlines to slip away, playing on the gray areas, which complicates the analysis of complaints in an incredible way.
If we want to clean up the industry, we also need serious sanctions. The referee must have a real whistle. And let him use it… like Bruce Hood, in the infamous Canadian-Nordics game on Good Friday in 1984. The epic brawls led to 11 player ejections and 252 penalty minutes, no less .
We need such a call to order in air transport. It’s up to Ottawa to see to it as soon as possible.