Some air passengers take claims to court, seeking compensation for delays, missing bags

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With some airlines denying compensation for delayed flights or missing baggage, a few Canadian passengers are taking their claims to court..

Edmonton resident Curtis Altmiks said he was booked to fly to Toronto with his wife and three nephews on a WestJet flight on June 6, which was originally scheduled to depart at 1 a.m. He told CTVNews.ca that after the passengers had completed boarding at around 2 a.m., the pilot announced his co-pilot was too tired to fly and the flight was cancelled.

"It was really frustrating," Altmiks said in a telephone interview with CTVNews.ca on Tuesday. "They didn't have any ground staff. They didn't provide anything to us and basically just left us out on our own devices."

His flight was rebooked for the next morning at 9:40 a.m., but was delayed again, he said. Altmik said the plane departed around 11:15 a.m. -- more than 10 hours after the original scheduled flight.

Under the Canadian Transportation Agency's (CTA) Air Passenger Protection Regulations (APPR), large airlines are required to provide $1,000 in compensation if the delay was under their control and length of the delay was nine hours or more.

Altmiks says his compensation claim was denied on the basis of safety. According to the APPR, airlines are allowed to refuse compensation if the delay was done for safety reasons, even if the situation is within the airline's control.

That's why Altmiks is taking WestJet to small claims court. He claims that the pilot being too tired to fly is a staffing issue the airline should've planned for, rather than a safety issue.

Taking the airline to small claims court is also what advocacy group Air Passenger Rights recommends if a compensation claim is ignored or rejected.

"The compensation owed to you under the Air Passenger Protection Regulations is essentially a kind of debt, nothing different substantially," Air Passenger Rights president Gabor Lukacs told CTV's Your Morning on Tuesday. "If (passengers) take it to small claims court and they've showed evidence, the court is going to order the airline to pay."

In other instances, both WestJet and Air Canada have denied compensation on the basis of staffing shortages. However, the CTA told The Canadian Press crew shortages should not constitute a "safety issue" and therefore shouldn't exempt the airlines from offering compensation.

Some passengers have also gone to small claims court to seek reimbursement for lost and delayed luggage.

Surrey, B.C. resident Simon Crimp said he heard nothing from Air Canada for more than 30 days after he sent his compensation claim for lost luggage. His luggage went missing for more than a month after a flight from Vancouver to London on June 3. Crimp said he also filed a complaint with the CTA, but has not heard anything back from the agency.

"I'd had enough waiting around, getting frustrated, to get answers from anybody. No feedback. So I just decided to go small claims court," he told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview on Tuesday.

Tom Oommen, director general of analysis and outreach at the CTA, told The Canadian Press the agency is currently facing severe staffing shortages and is trying to hire more facilitators who can help resolve customer complaints against airlines. In May, the agency had a backlog of more than 15,300 complaints, and Oommen said it can take up to a year before a complaint reaches an agency facilitator.

For lost and delayed bags, airlines are required to compensate up to around $2,300 per passenger per bag for any "reasonable" expenses incurred, such as interim purchases to replace missing clothing and other essentials, under the Montreal Convention.

After Crimp filed a lawsuit in small claims court, he said Air Canada called him a few days later to settle, offering $1,187 to cover the interim expenses for him and his son, as well as reimbursements for the court fees and a 20 per cent discount code for a future flight. However, Crimp says he is not satisfied with the offer.

"I'm asking for compensation … for the added stress and inconvenience of not having our bag for over a month. It's certainly not unreasonable to be quite honest," he said.

The CTA hasn't issued any fines against airlines for refusing compensation, but Lukacs wants to see stronger enforcement on the rules.

"We need to have proper enforcement," he said. "The Canadian Transportation Agency needs to start issuing hefty fines to airlines that break the law so that it will not be profitable."

With files from The Canadian Press