As of September 8, airlines are now required to provide passengers with refunds for flights that are canceled or delayed for reasons beyond the airlines’ control. The new federal requirements under the Air Passenger Protection Regulations (APPR) will now apply to all flights to and from Canada, including connecting flights. Under the new requirements, if a passenger’s flight is canceled or delayed for three hours or more for reasons beyond an airline’s control, the airline must offer the passenger a reservation on a flight operated by the airline or one of its partners within 48 hours from the time of departure on the passenger’s original ticket. If the airline cannot meet this requirement, it must offer the passenger either a refund or alternative travel arrangements, free of charge. For major airlines, this could mean rebooking the passenger on the next available flight on any airline, including competitors. Passengers are free to opt for a refund at any time after the 48-hour window and before being provided with a confirmed booking on an alternative flight. Airlines must pay refunds within 30 days, and any airline that doesn’t follow the new regulations could face a fine of up to $25,000 per incident. Under the previous APPR rules, airlines were required to rebook affected passengers, free of charge, on the next available flight operated by them or a partner airline. There was no requirement that the flight depart within 48 hours of the original flight, and airlines only had to provide refunds or offer alternative travel arrangements for holidays under their control. However, after Canadian airlines refused refunds for flights canceled due to COVID-19, Transport Minister Marc Garneau gave Transport Canada the authority to establish new guidelines on December 18, 2020. While the Canadian Transportation Agency touts the new guidelines as offering increased passenger protection, Gabor Lukacs, an advocate for Canadian air passengers and president of the non-profit organization Air Passenger Rights, said they actually hurt airline passengers. “It’s a scam. It’s smoke and mirrors,” Lukacs told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview Wednesday. “The government is telling people they are getting new rights when, in fact, the government is giving passengers a watered-down version of the rights they already have under the law.” Lukacs explained that in many jurisdictions outside of Canada, including the United States, the European Union, Israel and Turkey, airlines are required by law to provide refunds in the original form of payment for canceled flights, whether the reason for cancellation was within the airline’s control or not. This is without the airline having 48 hours to rebook a passenger on another of its own or partner airline flights. He said the expectation is also codified in the Transport Canada Act and the Air Transport Regulations, as well as in the legislation of some provinces. However, Lukacs said, the new requirements under the APPR give a false appearance of legitimacy to airlines that deny refund requests within 48 hours of when a canceled flight was scheduled to depart. “The government is giving airlines more opportunities to say they don’t have to refund passengers in certain cases,” Lukacs said. For example, under the new APPR requirements, a passenger whose travel plans depend on arriving at their destination within 24 hours is not owed a refund for a flight canceled outside of an airline’s control, as long as the airline offers them an alternative flight within 48 hours. If they decide not to take the alternative flight because it won’t get them to their destination on time, the new APPR requirements do not set out a refund requirement. “This seems to be a big loophole in trying to allow airlines to have some kind of legitimacy to pocket the money of people who decide not to travel when their flight is canceled,” Lukacs said. He said anyone in such a position could consider taking legal action against the airline involved, citing a different set of regulations, such as the Canada Transportation Act or the Air Transport Regulations, as well as existing case law. “If it were me, I would sue the airline in small claims court under the case law because it is not good faith performance of the contract to offer a flight in 47 hours,” he said.
