Originally Posted by
songsc
The point being, APPR is not only for protecting and compensating passengers, but more importantly, promoting/incentivizing airlines to provide better quality of service, hence becoming more competitive. What seems to be happening is that for whatever reasons airlines aren't improving their quality of service, as the data does not support better OTP since the introduction of APPR. We end up with airlines either paying compensations, which ultimately pass to consumers, or fighting against APPR rulings, again passing down the costs to consumers. Lynx going under is definitely not a sign of Canadian airlines are becoming more efficient and more competitive.
Just like most of the public policies, improving passenger experience is not as simple as introducing a law directly related to delay/cancellation compensation. What can airlines do about inefficient airport operators? How about ATC staff shortage? Pilot shortage and pilot union dramas? If airlines are toothless against these issues, then it's unfair to ask airlines to ultimately compensate passengers for the poor overall experience.
Quality of service is not something regulated by APPR btw. But so far, i think APPR has more or less failed in its objectives. All it has done is all significant costs to every airline (from payouts, to internal resources so they can process the claims, etc) aka benefitting only a small subset of passengers. As it stands the APPR is going to be the death of all ULCCs and regionals. There will be three airlines left by the end of this mess - AC, WestJet and Porter - and hopefully there is enough demand for all three to co-exist.
One potential fix that i dont see anyone talking about is and where governmental intervention could be very effective is to MANDATE every carrier to sign re-protection agreements with each other for IROPs.