Federal Transport Minister Omar Alghabra says there have been a record number of passenger complaints after those major air travel disruptions last summer and over the holidays. Alghabra says the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) has received a record number, “we saw an avalanche of unprecedented complaints.”
The minister says new money for the Canadian Transportation Agency will allow them to hire more staff to process complaints quicker, but experts say problems with the liberal government’s air passenger protection regulations go far beyond how long it takes for a complaint to be addressed.
Right now Alghabra says there are 42,000 complaints awaiting resolution. The federal government is giving the CTA nearly $76M over three years to deal with the backlog.
Alghabra says, “today we are providing an increase of over 70 per cent of the base budget that CTA typically operates with, that is a significant increase of over $25 million a year.” He says part of the money will be used by the Canadian Transport Agency to hire an additional 200 workers to process complaints.
“This is just putting a bandaid over the issue, we need to make systemic changes,” airline industry expert Robert Kokonis says today’s announcement doesn’t address larger problems with the government’s air passenger protection regulations. He suggests instead of just holding an airline responsible for cancellations and delays, the feds should make other air travel players responsible too.
“Right now only airlines are technically on the hook financially for breaching some of these regulations, but most of the competent players understand that we work in a system of airlines, airports, three federal government agencies, NAV Canada,” Kokonis said.
Airline passenger rights advocate Gabor Lukacs also thinks it’s a bandaid solution, saying the complaint system is too complicated and should be simplified, “the regime requires an inordinate amount of documents, evidence to determine the fate of a few hundred dollars.”
Alghabra says today’s announcement is just one part of his government’s plan to strengthen air passenger protection regulations and promises new legislation this spring.
“We want to create an incentive for airlines so that they deal with the complaints themselves, and that if they chose to defer to the CTA there will be a disincentive for the airlines to do so,” Alghabra said.
CHCH News asked the minister how soon the backlog can be cleared with this new money, he didn’t have a timeline. Experts point out that given the labour shortages in the airline industry as a whole, it may take a while to find and train these new workers.
