Air Canada Issues Apology, Compensation After Boy Bumped From Oversold Flight
Jackie Reddy April 18, 2017
The Doyle family were only told that their son had been bumped from a Montreal-bound service the day before departure.
Canada’s flag carrier has issued an apology to a family whose son was bumped from a recent flight from Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, due to overbooking.
The group intended to travel from Charlottetown to Costa Rica via Montreal for a vacation last month and father Brett Doyle had purchased the tickets with Air Canada late last summer. However, the day prior to the family’s departure, he found that he was unable to select a seat for his ten-year-old son Cole on the Charlottetown-Montreal leg of their journey during the online check-in process.
Despite spending hours on phone with the carrier’s customer service agents, the issue remained unresolved and so Shanna Doyle, Cole’s mother, drove to Charlottetown Airport (YYG) in order to speak to Air Canada representatives in person. At this point, Mrs. Doyle was informed that her son had been bumped because the flight had been overbooked.
Querying the situation, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reports that Mrs. Doyle asked if either she or Mr. Doyle could give up their seats for Cole. “I was told that while, yes, we could give up our seat, there would be no guarantee that the seat would go to my son,” she said.
Realizing it would not be possible to procure a seat for Cole on the original flight, the family then opted to book both the boy and his father on a flight out of Greater Moncton International Airport (YQM) in New Brunswick in an attempt to meet their Costa Rica flight in Montreal. This flight was canceled and the pair ended up being redirected to Halifax to catch a different connection.
The family estimates that they spent C$1,000 ($747) on their son’s flights. It has since emerged that Air Canada has offered an apology to the Doyles and issued the family with a C$2,500 voucher.
In an e-mail to the CBC, Air Canada said that it understood that “customers are inconvenienced when they are affected by an oversold flight and thus we take a very conservative approach to avoid this situation arising, and when it does, we pay significant compensation.”
[Photo: Shutterstock]
You’re Reading
I'll be honest, but I'm a bit of an AC apologist. Hell, I'm a bit of an industry apologist because I work within it. But this is inexcusable. You COULD say "oh well they should've paid for selected seats" which I agree with, when someone cries their kid is sitting 8 rows away. But THIS...pure idiocy. No one WANTS to get bumped, but there's a few things at play here. 1) As someone who was responsible for booking people on these flights, all of these flights in the maritimes are packed full, especially around the holidays. Now, presumably AC overbooks these even more since weather will disrupt multiple passengers. But maybe if their standard is overbooking 10%, for these flights, only overbook 5%? 2) I hope AC looked into bumping others. First, even if the family wasn't all booked on 1 booking, you've GOT to check the passenger's info before bumping them. Check the age, check if they've requested special assistance, check if they might be a UM. But also, seriously, why bump someone who's on a connecting flight? You couldn't bump someone who was just slated to go to YUL? Or maybe someone who was connecting via YUL to YEG or something like that? AC maybe has 2 flights to SJO a day, unless you have a plan in place right off the hop to get that passenger on UA or something (which YYG doesn't have) then this person should never have been the one bumped. 3) Did they need more than 1 seat? If it's a family of 4, maybe AC could've called and said "hey we'd like to send you 1 day later and give you $500 a head in credit and pay for the extra night in the hotel at the back end of the trip so you don't miss any days" or something. But seriously, if they needed one seat and bumped a kid? Come on.