Manitoba NDP MP Jim Maloway recently introduced a bill into Parliament which would establish a customer bill of rights for airlines. This is after Thievin’ Stephen and his lackies introduced a non-legally binding customer bill of rights in September. I won’t even get into how stupid it is to have a piece of legistlation that isn’t legally binding.
What is interesting is the airlines have decided to try and pre-empt a private members bill with their own customer bill of rights. Neither bill is perfect.
| Event | Maloway’s bill of rights | Airline tariffs |
| Delay | If a flight is delayed by two hours, passengers receive money for meals. If delay is five hours or more, every affected passenger will be offered reimbursement.What sort of reimbursement? | If a flight is delayed by four hours, passengers receive a meal voucher. No other reimbursement is provided. |
| Longer delays | If an air carrier “reasonably expects” a delay requires overnight stay, it will pay for hotel accommodation.What the hell is “reasonably expects” be specific. | If flights are delayed by more than eight hours and requires passengers to stay overnight, carriers will pay for accommodation.So if my flight is supposed to take off at 5:00 PM I have to wait until 3:00 AM or later to get compensated? |
| Delay on tarmac | If delay exceeds one hour, passengers would receive compensation of $500 for each additional hour of delay. Delay’s on the tarmac could be the airports fault, not the airlines. So what about sloppy airports. |
If the delay exceeds 90 minutes, passengers are given option of disembarking. Drinks and snacks will be offered, but no monetary compensation will be provided.Drinks and snacks are already offered, I already paid for them in the price of my ticket. And a 10 cent page of pretzels does not a snack make. |
| Baggage misplaced | Within one hour of finding that baggage has been misplaced, carriers must make a “reasonable effort” to tell passengers where the luggage is and what is being done to retrieve the baggage. If this is not done, passengers are entitled to receive $100.I like this. It doesn’t say you have to produce the luggage, just tell the customer where it is. | If luggage does not arrive on same flight as passenger, airlines will “take steps” to deliver luggage to passenger’s home/hotel as soon as possible. Any compensation provided depends on the case.What does “take steps” mean? |
| Getting bumped off flights | Passengers who get bumped or give up their seats voluntarily on an overbooked flight receive differing levels of compensation:
Why not just make it illegal to overbook a flight? if people have paid for their seats and don’t show up. then that is too bad for them however airlines would still get the same money |
If a passenger gets bumped, the airlines will:
I am okay with this. |
| Advertised price | Carriers will have to include the total cost of airfares in advertised prices.YES! Finally! | No regulations governing this issue.Unacceptable. Listing $29 tickets with $200 in surcharges is total crap. |
While it is about f’n time Canada established a customer bill of rights for airlines I can’t help but feel this yet another example of how Canadians have to pull Canadian businesses, kick and screaming, into doing the right thing. The next challenge a cellular customer bill of rights.