APPR General Discussion
 

New 'stricter' compensation rules proposed for Canada.
Canadian air passenger rights law will be 'toughest in the world': transport minister | CBC Radio

Air travel: Canada proposes tighter consumer rules | CTV News

I would encourage everyone to sign Gabor Lukacs' petition e-4376 (Google it, I'm unable to post links for now) to call on GC to adopt Bill C-327 into law and give more rights to consumers with airlines, if you haven't already. Here's hoping we get more momentum in adopting the Bill!

APPR General Discussion
 

I have been talking to a few aviation analysts and lawyers regarding Lynx, and they all pointed out how APPR and many other regulations are limiting competitions and making airline industry less efficient in general. I am not saying I fully agree with what they said, but it's interesting to hear from a different perspective, and it somewhat explains why AC fights APPR claims so viciously sometime.

I have a different view on compensation entitlement for a delayed YVR-HKG flight than I do for a delayed HKG-YVR. I don't think AC is any less liable, but if the regulations were "block time from the nearest hub plus 3 hours", "block time from the nearest hub plus 6 hours", etc., I think AC would have a much harder time fighting it, and if it meant the elimination of "but required for safety", I'd probably be in favor of the change.

Delay compensation requirements are much worse for airlines that fly further. If your longest flight is 2 hours, then a last minute sick crew member at your furthest outstation might be recoverable before delay compensation kicks in.

If that happens to AC in HKG or MUC or GRU or SYD or anywhere remotely far away, that's hundreds of $1000 payments.

Though I still think the cost to the airline of an aircraft sitting around waiting for a part, a mechanic, or a crew member, is much more costly to the airline than $200k in compensation. So I'm not really sure what they're thinking...

...except I do know they're thinking that we're making too many baseless APPR claims. Because they've said as much.

Meanwhile my cousin is now 3 hours delayed in CUN (5 hour posted delay) and has still not been offered food. Or, to be more specific, she's been denied food. I guess this will turn into another baseless APPR claim.

But what’s their explanation of why airlines in the EU are so competitive, despite the wildly more stringent EU261? I’ve never heard a good explanation of this.

I agree, but I will think we are the minority.

​​​​​​Flair is next now that they are a "large" carrier. Their business model as a ULCC cannot support obligations as a large carrier full stop.

I fully expect them to go under like Lynx within next 12 months.

The point being, APPR is not only for protecting and compensating passengers, but more importantly, promoting/incentivizing airlines to provide better quality of service, hence becoming more competitive. What seems to be happening is that for whatever reasons airlines aren't improving their quality of service, as the data does not support better OTP since the introduction of APPR. We end up with airlines either paying compensations, which ultimately pass to consumers, or fighting against APPR rulings, again passing down the costs to consumers. Lynx going under is definitely not a sign of Canadian airlines are becoming more efficient and more competitive.

Just like most of the public policies, improving passenger experience is not as simple as introducing a law directly related to delay/cancellation compensation. What can airlines do about inefficient airport operators? How about ATC staff shortage? Pilot shortage and pilot union dramas? If airlines are toothless against these issues, then it's unfair to ask airlines to ultimately compensate passengers for the poor overall experience.

Quality of service is not something regulated by APPR btw. But so far, i think APPR has more or less failed in its objectives. All it has done is all significant costs to every airline (from payouts, to internal resources so they can process the claims, etc) aka benefitting only a small subset of passengers. As it stands the APPR is going to be the death of all ULCCs and regionals. There will be three airlines left by the end of this mess - AC, WestJet and Porter - and hopefully there is enough demand for all three to co-exist.

One potential fix that i dont see anyone talking about is and where governmental intervention could be very effective is to MANDATE every carrier to sign re-protection agreements with each other for IROPs.

My point is, compensations for delayed and cancelled flights penalize airlines for poor OTP, hence promoting airlines to provide better quality of service in terms of OTP and IROPS handling.

And yes, this is my exact critics about APPR. OTP has not improved, and all the payouts and costs of handling APPR claims come from nowhere but customers.

This is the exact type of government interventions that should be happening. What's better than receiving compensation for late arrival is, not arriving late at the first place. Better for customers, better for airlines.

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.

We have no idea what costs and inconveniences passengers may have had to incur because of this cancellation (no doubt it will vary greatly from person to person, for some it will be trivial, for others it will be huge).

I don't understand what grounds you have for saying there is no indication that fewer flights are being cancelled. The relevant contrast class is the counterfactual situation in which the regulations don't exist, but everything else is the same, and it's not easy to see how to know what is happening in that counterfactual situation. (And if it's APPR we're talking about, we'd also need to compare a situation in which the regulations exist and are actually carefully followed by airlines rather than constantly being ignored, with a situation in which they just don't exist at all. That's not the current situation - now we have the law but weak enforcement/oversight.)

On the face of it though, the suggestion that penalties for cancellations have no impact at all on cancellations seems implausible. One either has to think an airline really just can't do better, or that it is not motivated by penalties.

There have been studies on the effect of airline regulation on performance, but it's hard to know what to make of them since (i) there are so many variables the quality of the studies is questionable, and (ii) there is so much money at stake that the integrity of the studies is questionable.

The APPR has been in force since 2019. In 2023, Air Canada ranked last among major airlines in on time performance, West Jet finished 7th out of 10.

https://www.cp24.com/news/air-canada...ica-1.6708064?

If there is evidence the APPR is reducing cancelations one might have thought the government would be keen to boast about.

There is to my knowledge no American federal regulation requiring compensation for cancelled flights and yet their legacy carriers are leading Air Canada and WestJet in on time performance.

https://www.transportation.gov/airco...vice-dashboard

The relevant question, though, is whether things would be better, the same, or worse with AC cancellations or delays if there were no APPR, and one can't answer that by looking at what other airlines do, with different management, in different conditions, in different markets. Moreover the APPR isn't even properly enforced, so even if we could somehow compare AC performance today with AC performance in the counterfactual world where everything is the same except the APPR was never enacted, it wouldn't tell us what things would be like for AC performance if the APPR were properly enforced. (As an aside, OTP isn't that relevant a metric because it doesn't account for the length of delay, which really matters, as Cow in particular has pointed out before.)

Even if we ignore all of the above, it seems we shouldn't just compare AC with the US and conclude regulations are ineffective. We'd at least have to include EU261 in the comparison, because it's a much stricter and better enforced (and longer standing) regulatory regime. Otherwise we are just cherry picking the evidence base.

On my part I suspect there are just too many variables for a post facto analysis to be very illuminating. It would be too hard to isolate the effect of regulation.

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.

In my case the compensation portion was automatic. I didn't ask for it and all I submitted were receipts for out-of-pocket expenses. I suspect it would be the same for all other passengers on my flight.