Minister vows accountability over holiday travel chaos, as airlines cite 'extreme weather'

Putting the blame largely on "extreme weather" and staffing issues, officials from major Canadian airlines Sunwing, WestJet and Air Canada have told MPs they are sorry that thousands of passengers were left scrambling or stranded this holiday season. The airlines say they'll be making changes, but so too should the government.

Airline executives were first in the hot seat on Thursday, as part of a marathon day of hearings of the House transport committee digging into why this holiday's travel season descended into chaos for many travellers. Following the airlines were airport authorities who also cited weather as a factor, but challenged the executives' efforts to place some of the blame on them.

When it was time for Transport Minister Omar Alghabra to testify about what he considered "unacceptable" passenger treatment, Alghabra told MPs that protocols "clearly" need to be reviewed.

Testifying alongside panel of departmental officials, he said that a "full examination of what happened" is already underway and that the federal government would take action accordingly.

"Our government is not hiding. We are going to assume our responsibilities and the industry must assume theirs… We will continue to work together so that this never happens again," he said.

Numerous incidents led to passengers struggling to get to their destinations this holiday season—some sleeping in airports and searching for missing luggage—amid widespread delays and cancellations, including hundreds of Sunwing passengers who were stranded in Mexico after the airline called off flights. 

'WE FAILED TO DELIVER': SUNWING

While insisting that they were planning early in the fall for the peak winter travel season, airline executives indicated Thursday that they couldn’t foresee — even with weather forecasts warning of winter storms — the compounding scale of the weather events experienced across Canada this Christmas.

"We operated nearly 1,000 daily flights on average. An Air Canada plane took off almost every 90 seconds of every day of the holidays. And we did this despite the extreme weather," said Air Canada vice-president of system operations control Kevin O'Connor. "Severe weather can drastically impact our schedule and our movement of people and their baggage. A delay in one part of the country has a knock on effect across our network."

Though, MPs were quick to challenge the air sector officials who pointed to weather as the leading culprit.

"You can't control the weather, but what you can control is the plans that you have to deal with it, as well as how you communicate with your customers," said Liberal MP Pam Damoff. "And both of those were sorely lacking over the holiday travel season."

Other "failures" of execution were not their fault, the airlines said, citing a malfunctioning baggage system at Toronto’s Pearson Airport, and de-icing fluid shortages in Vancouver as examples.

However, during the airport authorities' testimony, Vancouver Airport Authority president and CEO Tamara Vrooman clarified that "at no time" did her airport run out of de-icing fluid or aviation fuel. 

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"We're in constant communication with all airport partners, including carriers, and we did— because of the accumulation— use more de-icing fluid than we normally would. However, at no point did we run out," she told MPs.

From the perspective of Greater Toronto Airports Authority president and CEO Deborah Flint, what happened over the holidays was "a perfect storm of significant epic bad weather, and in an industry that is healing from the COVID-19 extended shutdown."

"Labour is still very weak across the board of our partners, cancellations due to weather have a compounding effect, leading to delays, backlogs and challenges with baggage," Flint said, acknowledging that a baggage handling system in one of its terminals did have a "glitch" but that it impacted less than 10 per cent of bags overall.

Despite airlines' apologies and vows to compensate impacted travellers, MPs dug in on Thursday trying to understand whether the airlines deemed their treatment of passengers acceptable

"While many of these factors were out of our control, I want to be clear with this committee and Canadians that our team immediately jumped into action to try to make things right for our customers," said Sunwing Airlines president Len Corrado. "We failed to deliver to the level that we had expected, and the Canadians had expected from us over this holiday season."

WestJet Airlines LTD.'s Jared Mikoch-Gerke, Andrew Gibbons and Scott Wilson appear as witnesses at a House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure, and Communities in Ottawa on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

(WestJet Airlines LTD.'s Jared Mikoch-Gerke, Andrew Gibbons and Scott Wilson appear as witnesses at a House of Commons Standing Committee on Transport, in Ottawa on Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick) 

During the hearing MPs sought to pin down just how quickly into the Christmas travel chaos did Alghabra engage with the airlines and airports, with some accusing him of being too slow to get involved.

"Where were you between the 23rd of December and 5th of January?" asked Conservative MP and committee member Luc Berthold. "Do you have the intention of following in Sunwing's footsteps and accept that you were at fault?"

"What do you want me to be responsible for? The weather or Sunwing's bad decisions?" Alghabra said in response.

"I have been personally involved even during Christmas Day, Boxing Day, on a regular basis being informed and briefed on what's happening, providing direction. My office has been in touch with airlines and airports daily, sometimes more than once a day," he said. "None of the airlines, including Sunwing, were clueless as to my feelings and my expectations as to what was happening."

Committee members also sought assurances that what was seen over the holidays won’t happen again in the future, to which they largely heard from airline representatives that systemic changes would be needed.

'GLARING GAP IN CONSUMER PROTECTION' 

The airlines agreed that what transpired was not acceptable in many respects and said they will be following their obligations under existing air passenger protection regulations. However, in an effort to pivot from the current situation, the airline executives also remarked about broader reforms they think are needed to improve the sector overall.

Remarking about broader reforms they think are needed to improve the sector overall, airline officials suggested redirecting the hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes and fees taken from passengers and the industry away from the general federal revenue, and into improving air transportation sector infrastructure.

Another suggestion made was to update reporting mechanisms so that all players are accountable for meeting service standards.

"The government must address the most glaring gap in consumer protection in Canada today. And this is the fact that your delay or cancel can be caused by many groups, yet only airlines have regulations governing our activities," said WestJet vice-president of external affairs Andrew Gibbons.

"We believe this committee should demand equal policies for any entity that provides a service that can result in a delay or cancel. This includes government entities, airport authorities, NAV Canada, and others. Strengthening overall accountability across our entire aviation system will improve service for all, bring down complaints, and provide the transparency our guests and all travelers deserve," Gibbons said.

He insisted this suggestion is not about playing the "blame game," rather "improving the system overall."

The holiday debacle has given renewed attention on Canada's process for handling travel complaints, with Alghabra coming out ahead of Thursday's hearing indicating his intent to make changes to strengthen the relatively new Air Passenger Bill of Rights.

MPs have agreed that the findings from these special hearings will be incorporated into a broader review the committee already has underway, on reforms to Canada's air passenger rights regime.

During his testimony, Alghabra elaborated on his plans, indicating an interest to put more of the burden on the airlines; seemingly rebuffing the airlines' please to share the blame when flights are cancelled or delayed.

There are calls coming from the opposition parties to update the policy that allows passengers to request remuneration for delayed or cancelled flights, to see airlines move to automatically compensate travellers rather than forcing Canadians to navigate through an often protracted claims process.

During the hearing, NDP MP and transport critic Taylor Bachrach—who had his return flight from Ottawa to his British Columbia riding cancelled amid the hearing—pointed to other loopholes he'd like to see addressed, such as airlines being able to dodge compensation by citing "unforeseen" impacts on their flight operations as a way to deem passengers ineligible for restitution.

"We're all here because Canadians are frustrated, they're angry, they're dismayed, and they feel betrayed. Both in the travel period of last summer and in the most recent holiday travel period, we saw the big airlines walk all over any semblance of passenger rights in this country," Bachrach said while questioning the minister. "The big airlines are acting this way because they can get away with it, because you let them."

The minister said he too is frustrated and that's why he plans to make changes. Alghabra said his department is already drafting changes that the federal government plans to bring before Parliament in the coming months, but welcomes further input from the committee.

"I commit to you that we are learning from the lessons of the last year, and that we are committed to clarifying, and strengthening, and simplifying rules," he said.

TRANSPORTATION AGENCY INVESTIGATING

Closing out the day's testimony was the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA), the tribunal that handles federally regulated transportation issues. It is currently investigating potential violations of regulatory requirements stemming from the holiday season.

While it is taking on this work, the organization is already facing a backlog of more than 33,000 complaints, with likely thousands more to be added as a result of the latest round of travel snafus.

The CTA's CEO France Pegeot and director general Tom Oommen faced questions about what they plan to do to get through these outstanding complaints.

"In order to help passengers who have filed complaints with the agency, we have recently added a new application to our website, which we call 'the case status update' which allows every complainant to know where they stand in the queue and what the next steps are in resolving their dispute with the airline," Pegeot said.

The CTA said that 97 per cent of complaints are resolved informally through a facilitation process, which takes an average of 20 business days to conclude.

Asked what areas of the passenger rights regime they think could be strengthened, Pegeot suggested clarifications are needed to remove "grey areas" that allow airlines to get out of compensation by citing issues such as safety.

Further hearings are expected to be scheduled as the House transport committee has also agreed to hear from Via Rail and CN Rail about their role in train travellers' holiday issues.

On Thursday, Transport Canada's associate assistant deputy minister for safety and security Nicholas Robinson told MPs that while it was Via Rail that had passengers stuck on stalled trains for hours, with minimal updates or access to food, the core cause of their delays was a CN Rail train derailment along the same corridor.

The committee also has plans to hear directly from affected travellers as well as passenger advocates as part of this study.