Originally Posted by
Heyden
I had my first experience with APPR when an Air Canada flight was cancelled at the last minute in April due to crew issues and I was rebooked the next day. This week I received two payments, one for out-of-pocket expenses for which I submitted receipts, the other was $1,000 in compensation which is more than I paid for the flight. AC should certainly cover the additional expenses and despite my reluctance to look a gift horse in the month I'm left wondering whether the additional compensation is merited.
The cost of compensation under the government regulations for my entire flight would be over $200,000. It might give some people satisfaction to think the government regulations have "punished" the airline for inconveniencing them but those costs will simply be passed through to other passengers. There is no indication that fewer flights are being cancelled and so the ultimate impact of the government regulations is higher fares with no increase in performance.
Because compensation for inconvenience is "not" automatic, generally speaking, only a minority of passengers (under 50%) of passengers apply for compensation for eligible flights - im just basing this on EU numbers i read.
But I think we live in a me-me-me type of society and everyone is focused on achieving maximum payout when they are inconvenienced by delays/cancellations.
Taking a step back however, the regulatory costs will simply be passed onto all passengers in the end either in the form of higher BASE fare OR like some carriers have started to do is add a fee called "regulatory/APPR" on each and every ticket.
What the APPR has NOT achieved is better operational reliability. EU261 has been around for 20 years and there is nothing to indicate that operational reliability of EU carriers have gone up.