Transpacificflyer

You may dismiss my view, but I believe it represents a large swath of the people who are not supportive of the plaintiff's position. I do indeed believe that one of the reasons why preferred customer/loyalty programs should not be structured in a draconian manner as your position would require, is to allow for wiggle room.
Yes, you are technically correct; that if one wishes to apply the terms and conditions of a contract, one relies on the exact terms of the contract to support one's case. However, I ask if this is a contract. No, it's not a trick question, but I have to wonder at that aspect of the AC FF program, especially since there has been no consideration (money) specifically paid by the plaintiff to gain his status. They payment made was for carriage on an aircraft, not for status.

I direct your attention to the key parts of the AC Altitude terms and conditions; (I bolded some parts that get my attention)
Terms and Conditions
Air Canada Altitude is a customer recognition program operated by Air Canada.
There are five status levels within Air Canada Altitude – Altitude Prestige 25K, Altitude Elite 35K, Altitude Elite 50K, Altitude Elite 75K and Altitude Super Elite 100K. Qualification for Air Canada Altitude status is based on the number of eligible flight activities (defined as Altitude Qualifying Miles or Altitude Qualifying Segments combined with Altitude Qualifying Dollars) earned between January 1 and December 31 of the previous calendar year. For instance, 2018 Altitude status is determined based on flight activities combined with Altitude Qualifying Dollars earned between January 1 and December 31, 2017. Members who reach a status level during the qualification year prior to October 15 may be eligible for early recognition at a higher Altitude status. Full details on qualification are available here.
Air Canada Altitude status is a privilege, which can be revoked by Air Canada at its discretion. Any act or omission by the Air Canada Altitude member or anyone acting on his/her behalf which is detrimental to Air Canada or any one of its partners in Air Canada Altitude, may result in any or all of the following: revocation of membership, prohibition of membership for a number of years regardless of flying activity, revocation of mileage accumulation as part of Air Canada Altitude, without prejudice to any other rights or recourses of Air Canada, including but not limited to the right to recover damages. Air Canada Altitude status and its associated privileges have no monetary value.

Air Canada will not be responsible for mail correspondence lost or delayed, or otherwise shall be under no obligation to continue Air Canada Altitude, or to provide any notice of its termination. Air Canada reserves the right to terminate Air Canada Altitude at any time.
Air Canada assumes no liability toward members for anything, including but not limited to, for the cessation of airline partnerships, changes to program benefits & policies, adjustments to mileage accumulation or redemption eligibility, availability of redemption or upgrade seats, definition of and/or revisions to the Air Canada Altitude qualification period or benefit year for status recognition, or access to airport lounges.
Air Canada Altitude members must also be Aeroplan® members in good standing. They may enroll individually, only once, in their full legal name. Air Canada Altitude membership is solely for the benefit of the individual who has been granted Altitude privileges, and cannot be shared. Air Canada will track eligible flight activities in order to qualify certain travelers as Air Canada Altitude members when they reach applicable qualification thresholds. To that end, it is the responsibility of the member to provide their Aeroplan Number at time of booking or check-in, and to ensure proper mileage crediting for eligible flights.
eUpgrade Credits awarded as part of Air Canada Altitude membership are subject to the terms and conditions of the eUpgrade Program, which can be reviewed at aircanada.com/eupgrades. Access to the Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge as part of Air Canada Altitude membership is subject to the terms and conditions of the Maple Leaf Lounges, which can be reviewed at aircanada.com/lounge.

Air Canada Altitude shall be governed by the laws of Ontario and the laws of Canada applicable therein, without giving effect to their conflict of laws principles. Air Canada Altitude members expressly consent to the exclusive forum, jurisdiction, and venue of the courts of Ontario and/or the Federal Court of Canada in Ontario, or any other judicial district or jurisdiction as Air Canada may determine in any and all actions, disputes, or controversies relating hereto. Any disputes regarding Air Canada Altitude or in any way arising out of Air Canada Altitude membership shall be submitted to the courts of Ontario whose courts shall have exclusive jurisdiction to hear such disputes, irrespective of conflict of law provisions.

Air Canada will be the final authority as to the interpretation of these terms and conditions.


The above bold points are self evident. This is a perk extended to the program participants and it has no monetary value. When the plaintiff participated as member of Altitude, he agreed to the terms and conditions of the perk extended. No one forced him to participate, and he did not have to provide his Aeroplan number.

I don't know why he is filing in a BC court if he agreed that the laws of Ontario applied. Sure, one can say that the plaintiff is based in BC and that his purchase might have occurred in BC, but he did agree to use an Ontario court. I expect that the first argument from defense counsel will be to dismiss because of the jurisdiction.

It seems to me that if the plaintiff had agreed to the program T&C, he aint got a proverbial pot to empty his bladder into.

As an aside, I appreciate that many SEs will have a vested interest in the case. And I certainly know that the flying habits of someone like you are significantly different than mine, so you use the perks and benefits of your status more than I do. However, I would caution you that if the plaintiff wins, one could see a very harsh and tightened approach to the Altitude program. Such a change wouldn't really touch infrequent FFs like me, but I expect they might negatively impact people like you. I could also see the option of purchasing a move up in tier status, e.g. E75 to E100 could be eliminated because of this litigation due to the introduction of a characteristic that someone might argue was a "consideration".

I expect AC would try to dismiss the case, and should it eventually make its way to trial in 2-3 years try and settle to avoid sharing of important information. In the interim, AC counsel can run the plaintiff legal costs meter with procedures and delays. I don't think the plaintiff is willing to toss $20,000-$50,000 to pursue this case that may not go to court for several years.

Yes! I can't see AC doing this without having made a case and having it sent for legal review.
AC may not have the best managers in the world, but chief legal counsel is considered to be excellent and has navigated some tough legal issues over the years. He would have had to sign off on this action because of the implications and I can't see him making a mistake on something like this.

Stranger

All nice and dandy, but orthogonal to my point that had to do with ethics, customers and corporations.


Potentially winning is one thing. How what comes across as heavy handedness and vindictiveness will play with customers is another.

Regardless of a potential outcome in court, is it really in AC's best interest to make this drag on?

How high within the organization would the affair have gone until now? Will the AC people involved in the pettiness get support from higher up now that the thing is in the open?

RangerNS

Upper class isn't about income, it is wealth. Upper class doesn't make money, they have money, and have enough money they don't need to post an annual income.

And they don't fly for business, they send for people to fly to them.

Playing FF games is, to me, an amusing aside to the burden of air travel. But beyond rerouting through Toronto to get to Boston or Ottawa because YHZ lacks a US MLL and PQ produced flying bad-ideas are a no-go, chasing EYW games is a tad strange.

But there is a fine point between bragging about getting free doubles and bragging about getting free doubles while gaming the system. I don't know the history (or post history), but if Mr Cow and Mr Wong have the same travel habbits and one gets a job offer and one gets their $30k a year kicked to the curb there is obviously some history beyond a lot of doubles.

canadiancow

I don't think the plaintiff is worried about spending $50k on this.

longtimeflyin

If AC is going to settle, it will be shortly, and if they are not, then this will take quite a while. Either way, if it gets settled, we won't know what the settlement term deal is, unless Mr. Wong breaks settlement privilege which obviously he will not do.

Perhaps, but we all know what I mean. Some of you (not you) inferred me as referring to the top 1%, versus "upper" can be simply the top 50%. Anyways, let's set good old Flyertalk pedantic rules aside for a minute and carry on.

longtimeflyin

There is no chance in hell (a word I don't use often) that the plaintiff has only spent this much. To get this case to where it is now, the plaintiff would have already spent six figures in legal expenses, easily.

Not directed at you specifically, but I don't think many of you appreciate the amount of funds that Mr. Wong would have had to spend to get this case to where it is today, and since he has spent this much already, I think he full well appreciates that to see this through his legal expenses would be over $1 million.

That said, he might get some of it back, but any decent and ethical lawyer (there are such gremlins) would tell a client to not expect any legal expenses to be covered by their opponent.

Typically speaking in a settlement it generally ends up that each party pays his or her own legal expenses.

Finkface

Do I not recall from earlier in this thread that the OP’s wife is an attorney? Too lazy to go back through and find it but I am pretty sure I remember that. That would certainly mitigate his legal expenses.

Edit: ok, that was easy.
https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/26737460-post91.html

longtimeflyin

Yes, the original poster's wife is an attorney; however, a quick research of the law firm that the original poster has retained, at least for the pleading unless he has notified the courts and Air Canada of a change in counsel, bills in the 4 figure an hour range.

Adam Smith

Not really, it's about both. Many people in the YVR area are very wealthy on paper given ridiculous increases in house prices over recent years, but don't make a ton of money and aren't really upper class. But statistics on wealth, because it doesn't have to be reported anywhere, are much harder to come by. You will also find that there are not many people making $500K a year who haven't also accumulated a fair amount of wealth.

Wealth generates income in the form of interest, dividends, capital gains, etc. A 5% yield on a $10MM portfolio generates $500K of income.

Patently ridiculous. Even multi-billionaires fly for business.

If your definition of "upper class" is limited to people who have massive inherited wealth, or billionaires who own private jets and are beyond caring about that, then sure, that handful (almost literally) of people in Canada don't care about this. But whether you want to pick an income or wealth measure as the goalpost, it doesn't matter, my original post stands.

mapleg

Maybe I am missing something here, but how is this case much different than hotel programs that cancel the points and membership of someone who they feel abuses their program?

I don't pay a lot of attention to many of the hotel FT discussions, but seems to be a number of FT posters have been given an unceremonious heave ho from their programs on a rather arbitrary basis. I do understand many of those are US based and different law applies vs Canada. What legal restrictions do loyalty programs have on their ability to walk the client down the gangplank should they desire to do so? (This could be AC, hotels, car rental companies etc) I'm really only interested in the legal aspects, not the issue or whether it is right or wrong.

longtimeflyin

There are a lot of unsubstantiated allegations but let's set those aside for a minute as they have little to no relevance to the case at hand until it goes to trial, and even if it does go to trial and this gets brought up, this still does not really affect the merits of this case.

The fact of the matter remains, (and this is one of the core matters that will have to be ruled on), that Air Canada markets a fully refundable fare as an option for a passenger to buy. This passenger is or was a frequent flier by any measure and has cancelled a number of tickets and this behavior has caused Air Canada to make a few decisions which has caused damages to the plaintiff. This passenger also has brought in a substantial amount of revenue when compared to several bottom feeder super elites.

Air Canada quite figuratively comes up with the sandbox and the rules for people to play in, and now has changed the rules for this one passenger as it's upset with how Mr. Wong has acted. There's something about a cake and eating it too.

If I were a betting man, my money would be behind Mr. Wong.

Unlike many customers though, Mr. Wong has deep pockets and has put his money where his mouth is with respect to showing he is serious about pursuing legal action. I bet you the legal department at Air Canada was shocked that this pleading was filed on June 19th.

longtimeflyin

The nuance here is that this is the case of an individual who has spent and qualified for super elite the hard way over several years who also has a high n number of cancellations, and when asked why he cancelled his trips, he declined to comment as he bought a ticket that offered a "no questions asked policy".

For me, I am very interested to what gets exchanged during discovery.

Canadian courts, from a precedent standpoint, do not take likely to corporations abusing their power. Let's see how this one plays out.

yeunganson

This whole thing started in Jan 2016 and 2.5 years later this still on-going and resulting in going to court. More likely than not, Wong (the Plaintiff) feels great injustice was done to him so he is going through with this lawsuit. I also believe this is something serious and dear to him enough that is beyond just money so things weren't settled out of court despite negotiation period. The law firm willing to help (and provided Wong with the best advice on Wong's best interest) ended up going to court meaning they think this is a winnable case. If it is an obvious lost cause, law firm would have asked Wong to settle or not even take him as a client if Wong is a al-cheapo prick (implied by some earlier posts favoring Air Canada).

By reading the court document, Wong has been quite unnecessarily humiliated including being escorted off the plane for no particular reason before allowed to re-board. Longtime and reputable members of Flyertalk on Air Canada thread seem to vouch for Wong so I don't think he is a bad characters (unlike that other Chinese guy that dined in the lounge for a year in China Eastern lounge in Xi’an, China ) .

My intuition says to me that Air Canada screwed up. One of Wong's hobby is aviation/mileage run, and he plays the game exceptionally well in Air Canada's Fly your Wings program. Some Air Canada higher ups found him playing too well and hurting profit margins so try to screw him. They thought he was some al-cheapo middle class dude that can be bullied and will just disappear. They didn't know he's an professional IT guy (high income), he's loaded and he really have passion on the game and the multiple occurrences of humiliation and loss of face is not going to allowed to slide. Chinese and the concept of loss of face is pretty explosive mix.

I don't think it matters much if the lawyer bill is expensive because in a civil case, the losing side pays for the winning sides lawyer fee. So if you and your lawyer thinks your case is very solid, you don't need to compromise. Both side's lawyers know the how the odds are... But if you're solid case and you're humiliated while Air Canada just look at the case as just another case, you're going to court just to get a day of justice and force the other side to do a kowtow.

Air Canada shouldn't be to unfamiliar with this kowtow - they just did one with the Chinese government by renaming Taiwan! (got to put that jab there)

longtimeflyin

It would genuinely surprise me if the likes of Mr. Ben Smith/Calin and co even know about this case. Air Canada is involved in several legal cases at any one given time, as are major corporations, so I would disagree with you that pettiness on the part of Air Canada employees is even at play in this case. While this case may be very much high on Mr. Wong's priority list, it would be safe to say that no one at Air Canada really cares as this case is one whereby a multi billion dollar corporation is facing against a lone individual.

mapleg

Courts are full of cases where each side has a lawyer saying "This case is easily winnable". Fact is, one of them usually loses...