Canadian flyers’ rights bill is long overdue

Canadian air travellers have finally been promised some protection from at least some of the indignities and aggravations heaped upon them by airlines.

Transport Minister Marc Garneau has introduced changes to the Canada Transportation Act that include, among other things, a plan for a passenger bill of rights.

It has taken an unconscionably long time for Canadian passengers to get this recognition that they have rights. Europe got a passenger bill of rights 15 years ago, and the Americans have had one for 12 years — although recent reports from the United States should raise questions about the U.S. concept of passenger rights.

Garneau’s legislation promises a bill of rights, possibly by 2019, that will spell out how passengers should be treated and when they can expect to be compensated financially.

Compensation could come for overbooking, delays, cancellations, and lost or damaged bags. They might even get compensation if they are on an airplane that sits motionless on the tarmac for longer than a specified time.

Children will be allowed to sit near a parent or guardian at no extra charge, rather than having to pay for a specific seat. This seems like such an obvious thing that might be hard to imagine why we need legislation to force the airlines to do it.

Passengers will not be bumped from a flight unless they agree, and if no one volunteers to get off an overbooked flight, the airline will have to keep increasing the compensation until someone volunteers.

As always, however, the devil could be in the details, and Garneau’s announcement was short on those.

To help make all this clearer to ordinary passengers, the law will require “plain language” explanations of the airline’s obligations and your right to complain and be compensated.

While flyers will be thankful to have all those rights set down in black and white, many will be irritated to learn that the legislation doesn’t ban overbooking, which many passengers argue is the worst airline offence.

Since a recent incident in which a man in Chicago was dragged off an overbooked United Airlines flight, we are all more aware that having a valid ticket is no guarantee that we will get on a plane. Most airlines overbook because of no-shows and other reasons, and their preferred customers can demand a seat on a sold-out flight — which means someone else gets bumped.

The prospect of arriving at the airport, already stressful for many passengers, and being bumped seems deeply unfair to most people outside the airline industry. It also causes serious disruption for travellers who generally want to get somewhere at a specific time on a specific date.

Air travel is a modern marvel that we take for granted, but most plane trips are still for important events: major vacations, family events, business meetings, job interviews and a host of other occurrences that are not taken lightly. Most are planned well in advance and most involve expense and disruption apart from the flight itself.

In other words, your trip is much more important to you than it is to the airline.

If it takes a bill of rights to make the airlines take our trips more seriously, then the sooner we get one, the better.

Let’s hope that Garneau’s announcement — which basically calls for a plan for a bill, not the bill itself — gets us what we need.