Seat13F_AC_CRJ

CTV story here: http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/montreal-...orts-1.3331771

Summary: AC refused boarding b/c childrens' passports were signed.

If this is what happened, AC is in the wrong.

Here is what is says on the Passport Canada section of the CIC website:

Step 2: Sign your passport or other travel documents
Sign your name in ink on the signature line on page 3 of the adult travel document. Please note that Canadian travel documents no longer contain a pre-printed digital signature on page 2.

Parents/legal guardians must never sign a child’s travel document. Signing your child’s travel document will make it invalid. Although children under the age of 16 do not need to sign the travel document, children between the ages of 11‒15 are encouraged to sign it. If it is not signed by a child, the signature block on page 3 must be left blank. A signature by a child under the age of 11 does not invalidate the travel document.

That page was updated about one year ago so it is not something Passport Canada rushed to fix after the story broke.
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wrp96

It sounds like you are assuming the kids are the ones that signed the passports, which if they did then yes AC was in the wrong per what you quoted above. But as the article doesn't detail it out, it could just have easily been the parents that signed the passports which would've invalidated the passports making AC in the right.

Badenoch

It would appear Air Canada was not in the wrong.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/costly-...orts-1.3331720

MasterGeek

that's why you should have a signature that is a scribble/symbol, and not something easily readable. In that way, the AC agent wouldn't be able to tell if the signatures are parent or child signatures

Seat13F_AC_CRJ

I wasn't sure, which is why I wrote in my OP, "If this is what happened..."
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Seat13F_AC_CRJ

Good detective work Badenoch. That bit was missing from the CTV article, and from the video it was unclear who had signed the passports.
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Pmun

I remember my dad making me at the age of 7 and my brother at the age of 3 sign our passports. Our signatures looked like total ...., but hey at least my dad READ the instructions.

flyquiet

As I read the news item, it said "THEY had signed THEIR CHILDREN'S passports" which I read not as "their children had signed their own passports" but as "the parents had signed the passports of their children." If my read is correct, then the passports are invalid as described in the policy, and AC would be correct to require them to obtain valid ones.

It's not that hard to read. When you complete forms every five or ten years (or for the first time ever), most people read the instructions really carefully, and in my opinion, it's really, really emphasized on the forms.

I appreciated the family making themselves look like idiots in order to wake up other families to pay attention. Surely the point of the news item was not to make AC look bad for upholding the law of the land.

Seat13F_AC_CRJ

Agree. If only one family is saved from a wrecked trip, there will have been value in this story.
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CZAMFlyer

That is not my experience with any form, ever. Most people in fact do the opposite.

(A quarter century of dealing with the public from a government perspective talking).

flyquiet

Personally, I still remember that Westjet story with people denied boarding for dried water spots on their passport due to dropping the passport in snow or something, and the caution to keep the passport clean, dry, and unwrinkled.
I keep my passport in a sleeve in the bottom of my bag and ONLY bring it out when NEXUS is not accepted (e.g., showed NEXUS and they requested passport anyway, or entering countries other than Canada/US). The bad experience of that one family with the dogeared passport gave me a full-on phobia.

jjclancy

Keeping it interesting, children's passports of some countries other than Canada must be signed by a parent.

ABG

I had an immigration officer in ANU once demand I sign my, at the time, 5 year old daughter's Canadian passport. Thank god for airport wifi and the supervisor on duty that day.

Alex71

True, one U.S. immigration officer once made us sign the American passport of one of our young kids since this is apparently the rule there.

Sean Peever

Is anyone else surprised that the agent took that much of a look at the passport to even catch that it was signed but not by the child?

I swear they only ever spend half a second on mine (2 seconds if it's a country I need a visa for).