Passengers who complain to the federal government about poor service at Canadian airports have to wait nearly two years due to a long backlog.
As first reported by Blacklocks Reporter, Tom Oommen, director of analysis and outreach at the Canadian Transport Agency, said:
Oommen recently sat at the Commons Transportation Board and said complaints had peaked in the summer but had declined again recently.
“Before the pandemic, we were handling about 5,000 complaints a year,” says Oommen. “Our efficiencies enabled us to respond to an average of 15,000 complaints per year.”
Bloc Quebecois MP Jean-Denis Garon calculated the resulting latency and said: do you think that is reasonable? “
“There is always room for improvement,” Oommen replied.
John Lawford, executive director of the Public Interest Advocacy Center, a consumer group, told the Transportation Commission that the backlog was due to “bad timing.”
“The Air Passenger Protection Regulation was proclaimed in the fall of 2019, just before Covid-19 broke out. But it has always been the position of the Center for Public Interest Advocacy that the regulation creates a backlog,” he said. I was.
Part of the CTA’s mandate is to investigate cases of people violating air passenger protection regulations. According to Blacklocks, in 2019 the fixed compensation rates were $400 for three-hour flight delays, $900 for denied boarding ticket holders, and $2,100 for lost or damaged luggage. .
Lianne Rood, a Conservative MP, told the committee her personal experience of what happened in the summer at an unnamed airport in Canada.
“Three-quarters of the flights on board have been canceled or delayed,” says Rood.
“There was no place to sit anywhere in the airport terminal, no chairs. was making,” she added.
Canada’s major airports made headlines this year with long wait times and flight delays. According to a recent survey, Toronto’s Pearson International Airport ranks his second year in a row with the lowest customer satisfaction among all major North American airports.
Some major airlines have blamed federal pandemic travel measures for the delays. requirements and all other restrictions have been lifted.
follow
David Wagner is a reporter for the Epoch Times based in Winnipeg.