Two months after a three-day strike brought Air Canada flights to a standstill, frustration is still mounting among some passengers who spent thousands of dollars trying to get home and are still waiting to be reimbursed. Montrealer Rina Antonucci is among them. Her family’s return flight from Dublin to Montreal was cancelled in mid-August, forcing them to book new tickets with another airline, cover hotel stays, and pay for meals and transportation — all out of pocket. “In total, the expenses added up to around $16,000,” she said. Antonucci said Air Canada told her she would receive about $11,800 — roughly $5,000 less than what she claimed for reimbursement and compensation. “But they haven’t given us a reason as to why they’re not refunding us for the full amount,” she said, adding that she’s still waiting for that money to arrive. It felt like the airline ‘disappeared entirely’: passenger When their flight was cancelled, Antonucci said she struggled to reach Air Canada for help. “It was as if the company had shut down and disappeared entirely,” she said. She said her family, four adults, also missed several days of work while stranded in Dublin — a financial hit they didn’t include in their claim. “And the inconveniences weren’t just professional,” she explained. “On the personal side, we have older parents who were waiting for us to get back — there are other stories with more people affected because of this.” Antonucci said the ordeal left her questioning how the airline handles crises and whether she’d ever fly with them again. Air Canada processing more than 1,000 claims daily Air Canada previously estimated that half a million customers were affected by the flight attendants’ strike in August. Tens of thousands of claims have since been filed by passengers seeking compensation or reimbursement. Antonucci believed the company was intentionally making the process difficult. “They’re just trying to make things hard for clients in hopes that people will just give up,” she said. In a statement to CTV News, Air Canada spokesperson Peter Fitzpatrick said: “We are processing about 1,400 requests a day and expect to have most complete by the end of October — although requests are still coming in.” Fitzpatrick also pointed to them introducing “a new technology over the past month” to speed up the process and having staff working “24/7.” Calls for accountability At Air Passenger Rights, an organization that advocates for air travelers, founder Gábor Lukács said the delays eroded public trust. “It’s creating public anger and it’s hurting not just Air Canada, but the airline industry as a whole,” he said. He argued that Canada’s air passenger protection laws are too weak to prevent situations like this one. “The Canadian Air Passenger Protection Regulations (APPR) are more of a placeholder — an excuse for not having real ones in place compared to, for instance, the European Union’s standards,” Lukács said. He believes the government should have intervened long ago to impose existing rules. “It’s really troublesome to see how much the government is afraid or hesitant to enforce the law,” he said. Lukács added that passengers who have been waiting longer than a month for a refund should consider taking their cases to small claims court. “Thirty days is the reasonable deadline airlines should take to resolve issues [like expense claims],” he said. “It’s the commercial standard, and if Air Canada doesn’t pay, I would just file at small claims court and make them pay.” Two class-action lawsuits have been proposed in Quebec for Air Canada passengers affected by the mid-summer strike. “What should happen is that Air Canada be given a multimillion-dollar fine — probably tens of millions — to send a clear message across the industry that Canada is no longer joking about air passenger rights,” Lukács said. After the ordeal, Antonucci said she plans on taking her future business elsewhere. She also hopes the airline reconsiders how it treats both passengers and staff. “Maybe by giving the flight attendants what they wanted would have been a better idea for everyone,” she said. “And it sure would have made them [Air Canada] look better.”
