The Canadian government has announced an additional CAD75.9m ($60.4m) of funding over the next three years to tackle the backlog of passenger complaints that have arisen due to Covid-19 related travel disruptions.
The Canadian Transport Agency (CTA) has reported that the backlog of complaints related to delayed, cancelled flights or lost luggage has grown from 18,000 in the previous summer to more than 30,000 in November 2021.
Since the recent holiday season, the CTA has received over 10,000 additional complaints. Transport Minister Omar Alghabra stated that the current number of complaints awaiting resolution has now risen to 42,000.
Alghabra explained that the extra funding, equivalent to 70% of the CTA’s current budget for air passenger complaints, will allow the agency to hire more employees to deal with the backlog.
In addition, the government is working on significant reforms to the Air Passenger Protection Regulations that would give the CTA additional authorities and place more responsibility on airlines to compensate passengers before complaints are filed with the CTA.
Internal surveys conducted by the CTA revealed growing dissatisfaction among passengers with the time it takes for the agency to resolve complaints, which have surged since passenger rights regulations came into force in 2019.
The surveys showed that 71% of passengers in 2022 were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the time it took for the agency to process their complaint, compared to 25% in 2019.
Furthermore, 53% of passengers in 2022 said they were unhappy with their overall experience with the agency. NDP MP Taylor Bachrach has called for the compensation program to be changed to allow for automatic compensation when a flight is disrupted.
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