Aviation companies are making the pitch to Ottawa that stricter rules designed to boost customer compensation and improve service could put passenger safety at risk — an argument consumer advocates reject as “ridiculous.”
The push, made in regulatory submissions and meetings on Parliament Hill, comes on the heels of sweeping reforms to the passenger rights charter announced in April and currently being hashed out by Canada’s transport regulator before going into effect next year.
The changes appear to scrap a loophole through which airlines have denied customers compensation for flight delays or cancellations when they were required for safety purposes. The sector wants that exemption restored, and says it doesn’t want pilots to feel pressured to choose between flying defective planes and costing their employer money.
“We want our pilots to be entirely free from any financial consideration when they take a safety-related decision,” WestJet CEO Alexis von Hoensbroech said in a video chat from Ottawa this week, where he was meeting with federal ministers on the reforms. The Air Line Pilots Association raised similar concerns in a submission to the Canadian Transportation Agency.
“Regulation should never be punitive for safety decisions,” he said.
In the European Union, however, where rules and precedents comparable to the impending passenger rights charter are in place, flight safety remains uncompromised, advocates say.
“Did it make it less safe to fly in Europe? I don’t think so,” said Sylvie De Bellefeuille, a lawyer with the advocacy group Option consommateurs.
The EU code came into force nearly two decades ago, shored up by court rulings that require compensation even for trip disruptions caused by safety concerns, such as mechanical issues. No major accidents involving EU-registered planes have occurred in commercial aviation since 2015.
“It lays pretty ill in the mouth of the industry to say that if you … take away that excuse then we will therefore fly unsafe planes,” said John Lawford, executive director of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre.
“I’m surprised that they would have the chutzpah to say that.”
Air Passenger Rights advocacy group president Gabor Lukacs called the claim “ridiculous,” and NDP transport critic Taylor Bachrach also slammed the argument.
“It’s quite alarming that the airlines would suggest that if the government holds them to a higher standard of customer care, there’s going to be a risk to passenger safety,” Bachrach said in a phone interview from northwestern B.C.
Loopholes and exemptions
Organizations from Nav Canada to the International Air Transport Association — as well as Canada’s main pilots union — maintain that safety will be jeopardized unless delays due to malfunctions or mechanical issues are exempted from what the Atlantic Canada Airports Association called “punitive measures.”
Proposed…
Read More: Airlines claim passenger safety at risk under new passenger rights rules
