tcook052

https://toronto.citynews.ca/2018/09/...hts-violation/

Air Canada has been ordered to pay an Oakville woman and her family nearly $70,000 after a consumer complaint body in India found the airline violated the passengers’ rights when they kicked them off a flight last September.

Minali Mittal was travelling with her three-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter from Chandigarh, India, to Toronto with a stopover in Delhi on September 3, 2017.

In documents filed by the State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, Mittal says her daughter was waiting to use the restroom before takeoff, which appeared to be locked for maintenance.

She said young girl threw up in the aisle after becoming nauseated due to a “foul smell” escaping the lavatory. That’s when Mittal claims Air Canada staff began berating and humiliating her daughter, then forced the three passengers off the plane.

Geoflying

Justice Paramjeet Singh Dhaliwal said in his ruling "(This was a) grave deficiency in service, unfair trade practice and violation of human rights and child rights, due to which the complainants suffered great mental tension, agony, harasment, humiliation and hardships"

longtimeflyin

I hope Air Canada contests and gets the court to overturn this verdict. On the basis of what I read, it's ridiculous the Justice ruled in the manner he/she did.

Often1

India may have been late to ratifying the Montreal Convention (2009), but it ratified. This judgment is a gone. The Convention exists to protect a critical part of the worldwide economy from petty local squabbles. It is what the Convention refers to as a "purely psychiatric" injury and thus, at worst the family gets whatever IDB gets you in India or perhaps Canada.

ffsim

I'm perfectly ok with AC deboarding this (or any) family for this reason:

If Mittal's claims are true, I'm not ok with this:

And it seems like neither is the judge.

rankourabu

I guess when you become a judge in a court of law, then maybe you get to say what ridiculous is...

The only language corporations understand is money. And its how justice is dispensed. Good on the family for following through with the case.

vernonc

Which part did you not like ?
That the judge believed the family over AC ?
That the award was too high ?
That the family was turfed without verifying if the girl was sick ?
That they were not rebooked for three days ?
That the washroom was locked ?
Or do you think all of it was made up ?
Obviously the judge made up his mind based on evidence and testimony that you or I have not seen.
I am guessing (as are you in your opinions) that AC staff dealt with this in a high handed fashion, that AC ignored the complaint or thought the customer would not follow thru and/or any award would be small or the Indian justice system would move as it always does at a snails pace. I guess this was a shot of smelling salts.

canadiancow

If I saw someone throw up before a 14 hour flight, I wouldn't want them on board. And given what happened the other day with EK in NYC, I don't think the airline or government would want them on board either.

II haven't read the article, but clearly the humiliation must have been severe.

The last thing I'd want if I'm sick is to be humiliated for it. I threw up on a flight within the past year. Everyone around already knows it's happening. I don't need the crew to rub it in.

songsc

I totally agree that medical reason is sufficient to remove some passengers from the flight, as the EK incident at JFK mentioned above (and all those zombie movies :P ). However it's very often that the cabin crew did not handle these situations properly, or the rebooking process is less than satisfactory.

rickg523

Like no one here has ever walked into an unseviced PortaPotty and felt like vomiting. Maybe you didn't. But maybe a little girl doesn't have your intestinal fortitude
A kid tossing their cookies due to a vile odor is not necessarily an indication of pathology. But it certainly presents an unpleasant cleanup for the crew and as has been well documented on this very forum, AC crews tend to overreact in a high handed, entitled fashion when faced with extra, unpleasant work.

ffsim

I'm in absolute agreement with the rest of your post, so I'll just focus on the bit quoted above.

Had you said, "if I knew I'd be sharing a plane with a contagious person for a 14 hour flight, I wouldn't want them on board," I'd agree with the whole thing. But you can't just decide that a person can't fly because they've thrown up. Planes carry vomit bags and cleaning products and carpet patching kits for a reason -- people throw up on planes. People also throw up for reasons which are completely noncontagious and harmless to others: motion sickness, pregnancy, food poisoning, etc. Heck, babies sometimes throw up because you've fed them

I think it's imperative to make the best medical diagnosis possible given the circumstances (ie non-medically trained personnel working at an airport) whenever a passenger presents themselves with something that could be conceived as a health threat to other passengers (coughs, vomiting, rashes, etc). And if they must be off-loaded, then that process should happen in the most professional and compassionate manner possible.

vernonc

I would also like to not fly with sick people. In this instance the complainant claims and the court agrees that the child threw up because of the smell from the closed washroom and was not actually 'sick'. And most of the judgement also revolved around treatment of the passengers - berated the child, off loaded them without providing any service like food/water/accomodation and sending their bags to TO without the pax. The fine was levied jointly on Jet/AC because it was a codeshare. More details here.

“Crew staff of Air Canada screamed at minor complainant and wrongly termed it as sickness of complainant No.2 (Teesha), minor, and on that grounds they misbehaved and forced the complainants (mother and her two children) to deboard the plane, taking the plea of safety of other passengers,” the Commission said in its order.

https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/jet-...family-1909317
“The act of opposite parties No 4-6 (Air Canada) in deboarding complainants at Delhi airport without any sufficient, cogent, effective and valid reason, in the night hours on 03.09.2017… amounts to grave deficiency in service and adoption of unfair trade practice on part of all opposite parties, as Jet Airways was having Code Sharing Arrangement with Air Canada,” the order said.

The Code Sharing arrangement is a commercial agreement between two airlines that allows passengers to use a ticket from one airline to travel on another.

“In the present case, the complainants were forcibly deboarded from the aircraft on flimsy grounds and were left at the airport, without any luggage, eatables or even without a bottle of water…

“Admittedly, when the complainants were deboarded at Delhi airport, their luggage was not offloaded at Delhi, rather it was taken to Toronto in the flight of Air Canada. Thus, the complainants have every right to take action against both carriers, being contracting parties, due to their illegal and forcible deboarding from the flight at New Delhi.

“Thus, both carriers, Jet Airways and Air Canada, are jointly and severally liable for the deficiency in service faced by the complainants,” the Commission held while describing the acts of deficiency of service as also violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

whimike

Longtimeflyin is expressing his opinion based on what he read and said he hopes AC contests the judgement. Why would he need to become a judge in a court of law to say what he thinks is ridiculous? He would need to become a judge in an appropriate court to overturn the verdict based on his opinion it was ridiculous, but not to form an opinion of it being ridiculous nor to hope that AC contests the decision, that is covered by free thought that most humans posses.

skybluesea

Hang on folks, this is not a court, rather a consumer protection body like the CTA that can make quasi-judicial rulings.

+ this body is in the State of Punjab, presumably where the plaintiff lives, rather than in Delhi where AC & Jet have their principal place of business, so whether an order from one state is even enforceable in another state in India is a question that will end up certainly in a real court when AC & Jet are certain to challenge.

rickg523

IMO, the response was mirroring the judgementalism in the initial post. If Poster A can judge the suit - and by inference the finding of the court - "ridiculous", why can't Poster B express his opinion that Post A is ridiculous? Isn't that too covered by free thought that most humans possess? Is it somehow less appropriate because of the much higher likelihood that the subject of the opinion might actually be reading it, instead of just being a posted reaction to an article