‘There’s a lot of public anger’: Will the new measures in the federal budget finally fix the airline complaints backlog?

We'll believe it when we see it.

That's the message from passengers' rights advocates and airline industry experts after the federal government vowed in this week's budget to beef up protections for airline passengers and to speed up a backlogged complaints process.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland announced that the government would introduce legislation to improve compensation for flight delays and cancellations to bring Canada in line with leading international approaches."

While that suggests the government is aiming to lift Canada's Air Passenger Protection Regulations up to the gold standard" seen in the European Union, passenger rights' advocate Gabor Lukacs worries lobbying from airlines and airports could get in the way.

The government should be trying to match the EU gold standard," said Lukacs, founder of Air Passenger Rights, a consumer group. But the airlines don't want this. They're lobbying hard against it."

There's currently a backlog of 42,000 passenger complaints with the Canadian Transportation Agency, which is responsible for enforcing the APPR. With that kind of backlog, the government had no choice but to act, Lukacs said.

There's a lot of public anger," said Lukacs. The thing that gives me hope is that even airline industry people would agree privately that there's a problem."

The complaints backlog is partly the result of a lengthy, cumbersome and expensive process, Lukacs said.

It shouldn't take $1,800 worth of resources to decide a dispute over a couple of hundred dollars. About 95 per cent of cases should take about 15 minutes to decide."

John Gradek, a former Air Canada executive and head of McGill University's Global Aviation Leadership Program, is also taking a wait-and-see approach about the government's budget commitments. He's got a distinct sense of deja vu, and points out that the government made similar commitments in 2016 and 2017, before unveiling the APPR in 2018.

The EU model was already there back then," said Gradek, and the carriers and the airports basically lobbied very strongly with Transport Canada and the Canadian Transporation Agency saying we don't need to go to that level. We need some outs.'"

And, he added, that's just what they got. While the size of compensation for delayed and cancelled flights under the APPR is broadly similar to that given under the EU's Regulation 261, Gradek says there are far more ways for airlines to avoid paying that compensation in Canada.

The size of the compensation is very comparable," said Gradek. What you have in Canada is the wiggle room to get out of it."

Airlines, meanwhile, are already slamming the budget as a missed opportunity."

In a press release, National Airlines Council of Canada president Jeff Morrison blasted the budget's commitment to give federal transport minister Omar Alghabra the right to charge airlines a regulatory fee to cover the cost of the CTA complaints process.

Morrison also criticized the government for proposing to boost the air travellers security charge (ATSC) paid by all airline passengers. The fee is set to go up by $5 to $19.87 for domestic round-trips, while an international round-trip will rise by almost $9 to $34.42.

The government is signalling that air travel may become less affordable for middle-class Canadians," said Morrison.

The ATSC is in addition to airport improvement fees charged by Canadian airports, which have also risen repeatedly in the wake of the COVID pandemic. Travellers departing from Toronto's Pearson International Airport now pay a $35 AIF, up from $30 last year. Aeronautical fees" paid by airlines, which already amounted to thousands of dollars per flight, also went up by four per cent this year.

Still, charging the airlines to fund the complaints process is something already done in other industries, and makes perfect sense, said Gradek.

Let the airlines and the industry pick up the tab for this complaint review process. Take it out of the taxpayers' hands, completely. If the problem is caused by the industry, let the industry fund the resolution of that problem."