kangarooflyer88

I got to thinking about how Air Canada handled my APPR claim. The sheer arrogance of their response that crew scheduling is not their fault, thumbing their nose at APPR designed to protect Canadians against unpunctual flights. The fact that someone flying for £10 on RyanAir or EasyJet would receive their EU 261 compensation without so much as a fight meanwhile those of us spending hundreds of times more on said flight are lucky if we get a meal and hotel voucher. I also know that the fight ahead to get what is entitled may be a long way involving the ACCC, CTA, small claims courts in Australia, Ontario and New Brunswick depending on how things go. I can completely understand why many people would simply accept the coupon handed to them as compensation. I also see, looking at this thread that there are many people in a similar situation. For whatever reason I just don't think it's right for Air Canada to be flagrantly breaking the law.

Hence, what I propose for those interested is we form a class action suit against Air Canada to get this compensation doled it. I reckon there must be thousands of people in the same situation as I and clearly it would be more economical if we all joined forces and sought remedy through a class action than to go our own way and wait weeks, months or perhaps evens years for the CTA to get back to us given the many appeals they have to look at. I'll be contacting law firms here in Australia and in Canada ( I know a couple that deal with aviation related class actions) to see if there is any interest in taking up the case. I'll try and keep people posted on the progress of this as I go along.


I stand corrected. Notwithstanding this fact, this coupon will do little use for me as I book flights on Delta or Qantas in the coming months. It will not cover the expenses incurred out of pocket by the long layover by yours truly. Only cash can do that and per APPR this is what I'm entitled to due to a cancellation entirely within Air Canada's control.

-RooFlyer88

Lars Johansen

Its now 30 days since I sent my claim to Air Canada due to a delay that caused us to miss our connection, and had to pay for two nights accomodation out of my pocket. Should I wait for a reply or just send the case to the CTA?


I was hoping getting my expenses reimbursed by the insurance company instead of waiting for Air Canada, but they want an official statement from Air Canada regarding the delay. Flight affected, reason for delay etc.. pretty industry standard.

I filed an request for an insurance letter to Air Canada at the same time as my APPR claim. The response for an insurance letter came today, they even refuse to issue a letter

The response was:

Thank you for contacting us regarding the information you need to provide your insurance company.

If you experienced a flight disruption, the insurance company will accept a copy of the itinerary you received upon booking and any itinerary updates received thereafter, along with copies of any flight delay/cancellation notifications you received.



For the record I did not receive any delay notifications, only notification I got was when boarding started.
I have already provided this to the insurance company, yet they want an official statement. Which I can understand. I am quite suprised by this response by Air Canada, I have never - ever had problems getting an insurance letter / statement from an airline before.
Also this rejection makes me even more sure that I am eglible for compensation due to this delay.

kangarooflyer88

You should wait for their response. I know it's hard hanging in there but by waiting for AC to respond you get their official position on the matter on record (i.e. in your email). In my case I submitted my APPR claim to them on June 28th and only yesterday received a response back (rejecting the claim since crew scheduling is something outside of their control). Armed with their official response, I can now approach CTA, ACCC, or a small claims court to seek compensation since they breached their contract with me regarding compensation and any court in the land will laugh at any argument that crew scheduling is a delay outside of their control. What is key is you need to give them the opportunity to investigate. That way you can claim to a judge or to the CTA that hey, we acted in good faith to allow them to investigate the matter before escalating, and when their investigation concluded that crew scheduling was not within their control, it became clear that the airline wanted to breach the contract they had with us.

You can track the progress of your APPR claim by visiting the Air Canada website. Click customer support on the top banner and when the customer support page loads, you'll see a red dot towards the lower right of your screen. Click on it and a chat window will appear. Enter your case number from the APPR claim and the chat bot will come back and provide you with an update on the claim. Most likely it will say that the case is still under investigation.

Hope that helps.

I just reread the official response provided by AC to my APPR claim and notice conflicting advice. After discussing the reason they believe the claim should be denied they say the following:

Meanwhile later on in the email when they provide details on the eCoupon it says the following for T&Cs:
You may be right Adam that it can be used across the board for AC flights but the email response is confusing at best about how said eCoupon can be used. Certainly, I won't be using this eCoupon as I plan on receiving the full $1,000 entitled to me due to the 16+ hour delay.

One other point I think is worth sharing for every single person on this forum and something that I hope everyone shares with friends and relatives is that filing an APPR claim is not a waste of time or energy. You will get something out of it even if you only fill out the form. At the very least you can almost certainly expect to receive some discount by way of eCoupon or % off base fare. And if you are persistent and principled you might even get a lot more for your troubles. Please folks, please, if you ever get delayed and fall within the APPR, submit the claim now, ask questions later.

What is unclear about APPR is how the CTA monitors the statistics on this. For instance, does Air Canada need to report to the CTA how many APPR claims they received? If so, then every claim we put forward will put more pressure on the CTA and Air Canada to do the right thing. The CTA may very well shrug off a couple of thousand of APPR claims filed by AC customers citing the pandemic, but when we're talking about tens or even hundreds of thousands of such claims, it will become apparent to the CTA that the airline is making a mockery of APPR.

-RooFlyer88

zappy312

If you reply to their email and state that insurance requires a letter from the airline with your information, flight details, reason, etc., they should reply with one (speaking from a friend's experience). I don't know why it takes Air Canada 30 days to come back with what's basically an automated reply saying we don't give those out.

At the same time, I wonder if insurance will take that as Air Canada's official statement.

cmill007

It's entirely by design. The longer they can drag it out, the more time people have to cool down, and the less likely they are to continue putting up a fight.

Lars Johansen

I replied to the mail immediately telling them that I really need an official letter.

However when checking the status of the case today on Air Canada -> Customer Support -> Chat, its telling me that the case is close.

Is there still hope for a reply?

psiachp

Hi all,
I had a cancelled flight from June 29 (offering me a later flight 12 hours later!), submitted the APPR claim to AC on July 1. I ended up cancelling the flight but asked the agent to note the offered alternative was simply not acceptable to me.
Received the email July 1 confirming receipt of the APPR claim, said "30 days" - it's not been about 60. Do I have to call? (I know not to expect anything since they'll claim covid or whatever "safety").

poshul

I called around to a few law firms about this back in June and wasn't able to get any bites, so I ended up handling back in Germany, where I have insurance and lawyers aren't so bloody expensive. That said, if you get someone interested I'm happy to join as a named plaintiff. For what its worth I know that millertiterle.com have experience suing AC before.

zappy312

Another CTA Decision has come out, this time finding Air Canada at fault for "crew constraints". AC presented more evidence this time (compared to WS). Even though the FO was unable to complete their refresher training, and AC couldn't staff the flight due to the pandemic, the delta variant, new government measures, operational issues, third party staffing issues, and bottlenecked training, the CTA didn't find accept that as unavoidable despite prior planning (or lack thereof).

cmill007

Has anyone at all gotten a response from Customer Care after responding to the initial denial email?

Bohemian1

The case summary makes for interesting reading. For me, one new Air Canada strategy jumped out.

In addition to revising the reason for the disruption originally given to the pax, AC also appears to claim that even determining the underlying issue for a given disputed claim is outside of their control:

Perhaps this explains AC's perpetual lack of OTP - an inability to understand or control anything specific.

That said, the CTA didn't buy this assertion, so perhaps future APPR claims will benefit. At least for complaints involving AC.

As Adam Smith and others have observed, the practical bounds of the APPR are being defined over time via individual cases.

yulred

The latest ruling strikes me as very similar to the WS ruling: the airline didn’t provide its homework. It’s also an old case (August 2021), so I suspect AC will come better prepared for newer cases.

I expect AC’ll join WS in the latter’s court action on the same ruling it received. Here’s their stance:“WestJet’s lawyers essentially argue that the CTA misinterpreted various sections of the APPR when ruling that staffing numbers are mostly entirely in the airlines control and that a company must take “all reasonable measures” to mitigate the effects of staff shortages.

WestJet also accused the CTA of making a mistake by “reversing the onus” of proof by demanding that the airline prove that that any disruption to a flight is not in fact within its control.”

https://nationalpost.com/news/westje...b8dc7d00e/amp/

The “reversing the onus of proof” argument is an interesting tack. If the onus of proof isn’t on the airline, it presumably reverts (at least partially) to the CTA’s own normal standard: the onus is on the applicant to establish, on a balance of probabilities, that the carrier failed to properly apply the rules applicable to their ticket.

That adversarial approach employed by the CTA for far too long may prove to be its fatal flaw. If the courts rule that the onus of proof is on consumers to prove that airlines control a situation, those APPRs are more or less dead in the water, with many questions about the CTAs ability to function in its current form.

While these rulings suggest a move in the right direction, I remain pessimistic about a positive outcome (for consumers) from the courts. I’m not convinced that the courts will be able to square away the onus of proof precedents the CTA has set with its adversarial approach to consumers. That’s where the NS small claims court stumbled as well with the APPRs - with the consumer being unable to prove AC could have fixed its planes in shorter period (how a consumer is supposed to prove that….is anybodys guess).

canadiancow

In the context of APPR, I certainly don't think this is a valid defense for AC.

However, I don't disagree with AC.

On a given day, if you have 75 unexpected aircraft swaps and 100 crew swaps, due to previous upstream issues and other constraints, what is the cause?

Weather in YVR means the 1800 YYZ-LHR inbound aircraft is going to be 3 hours late. Instead, they take the 2000 YYZ-FRA aircraft (giving it the aircraft now ready to depart at 2100). But now there's a crew timeout issue on YYZ-FRA, so they need to grab a reserve crew, who will also not be available until 2100.

What's the cause of the 2 hour YYZ-LHR delay? Weather? Fleet management?

What's the cause of the 1 hour YYZ-FRA delay? Weather? Fleet management? Crew constraints?

IMO unless there's something like a thunderstorm at my origin or destination airport, it's all AC's fault/responsibility/etc.

But there are a lot of moving parts for any given flight, and while I will fight for compensation every time, I'm not going to fault them for not being able to attribute a delay/cancellation to one specific underlying cause.

zappy312

Good example and take.

I had an afternoon YYZ-XXX flight that was cancelled due to "maintenance" (as listed in the app, the actual phrasing is more vague). The tail assigned that was originally scheduled to fly my YYZ-XXX flight, ended up flying YYZ-YTS-YYZ-XXX, with myself being rebooked onto YYZ-XXX later that evening.

Based on the series of events, I really doubt my YYZ-XXX flight wasn't able to operate due to unscheduled maintenance. I'd like to think it was a fleet management decision to take the plane, use it on a different route that afternoon, and then use it to get me to XXX that same evening.

(But of course, AC determined it was due to unforeseen staffing issues...related to ground handling activities...which arose due to COVID-19".)

YYCCL3

Yes, I once responded with detailed information indicating that I believed their excuse to be false, showing the assigned aircraft, its movements, and the time the delay was announced via email. They simply said they were sorry that I was unhappy and copy-pasted the rest of the initial denial response.