yulred

I know better than to argue with a Mod but :P kangarooflyer88’s issue involved crew scheduling. Crew scheduling is explicitly mentioned by Garneau in the video as grounds for compensation.

That said, the financial post article I linked (which I’m pretty sure is about an APPR adjudication, not airfares), also mentions that the APPRs are, well, garbage.

Consider this - verbatim in this sequence from the APPRs

Day-to-day operations

Flight disruptions caused by the following would generally be within an airline's control.

• Staff and flight crew scheduling and availability;
• Flight preparation activities like aircraft cleaning, baggage loading, and aircraft fueling; and
• Scheduled maintenance, including any subsequent repairs or required activities.

Please note: While these examples are generally considered to be within the airline’s control, there may still be some specific cases where they might be considered either within the airline’s control but required for safety, or outside the airline’s control.

In effect - on crew scheduling - the rules have a 380-sized hole that AC has driven a 777 through.

I think the Financial Post article is also relevant because it includes some important considerations, namely that there appears to be an onus on kangarooflyer88 to show that AC controlled the crew-scheduling situation (see “Geddes should have provided more evidence supporting his claim the (maintenance) work (on an airplane) could have been completed faster, Pink said.). If the APPRs require that passengers demonstrate how quickly an airline should be able to carry out maintenance work on an airplane… I think you get my drift.

That’s an adjudicators decision based on the way the APPRs are currently written, and -notwithstanding that he’s bound by them - he doesn’t mince words about how bad they are. I wish kangarooflyer88 all the best - and I want him to prevail - but I think it’s clear that he’s fighting against the odds precisely because the APPRs themselves are garbage.

I therefore don’t think AC is being ludicrous. It’s calculating - rationally, I think - that folk like kangarooflyer88 are going to struggle to prove that:

a) COVID isn’t a safety issue
b) the absence of a COVID-free crew isn’t a safety issue for the safe operation of a flight (i.e. should infected staff be on the plane?)
c) AC controls the degree to which its staff get COVID.

That could’ve been preempted by not inserting the “safety” caveat into issues with the airlines control (e.g. like in the EU), but Garneau made a decision to sign off on precisely that.

Now we’re left hoping that CTA dials that back - or at least rules in kangarooflyer88’s favour, which common sense dictates it should, but we need to be realistic: the likelihood of the CTA doing even that is lowered by the fact that they’re bound by the need to keep an eye on AC profitability, which isn’t great right now.

So I’ll apologize for the third link, which was probably off topic (beyond demonstrating the systemic problem with CTA), but I think the clip and the FP story apply to kangarooflyer88’s case - the clip identifies crew scheduling as requiring compensation, while the FP article highlights the general mess that these rules are, and more importantly, the thresholds at play here, with the onus on passengers to prove them without access to much information.

Not saying kangarooflyer88 is guaranteed to lose, but would bet on him losing. Because of the APPRs.