Client frustration grows over airline policies
Travellers, agents fed up with customer service after pandemic forces cancellation of flights
Natalie Rahey and Blair Skrupski were supposed to be standing under a wedding canopy in three weeks, hand in hand on a Caribbean beach surrounded by friends and family.
Instead, the Halifax couple was left holding nothing but a travel voucher and a lighter bank statement after Air Canada Vacations cancelled their flight — one of thousands cut amid the near-total shutdown of the airline industry due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Their nuptials in Mexico’s Riviera Maya are on hold as they and their nearly three dozen guests grapple with the more than $50,000 that now sits in an Air Canada account.
Rahey said their travel voucher — valid for the next 24 months — requires them to rebook at the same resort for the same price or more within the next two years, even if cheaper options become available.
“If the cost to rebook our wedding is more expensive, we have to pay more. But if it’s less, we don’t get the difference back. Air Canada gets to keep that money. And no refund was offered,” Rahey said. “To feel like we’re not being taken care of is just incredibly disappointing.”
Travellers and travel agents alike are increasingly fed up with refund policies and customer service at Canadian airlines amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with no word yet on what strings might come attached to a potential bailout for the struggling sector.
A petition calling on Ottawa to refuse an aid package to any airline that does not refund customers for cancelled flights now touts roughly 3,000 signatures.
Most Canadian carriers are offering customers flights rebookings or vouchers — but not refunds — amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars in effective interest-free loans to airlines from passengers, said Toronto resident Bob Scott, who launched the petition last week.
“It’s absolutely disgraceful,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything — anything — like the fury that’s being unleashed at the airlines by consumers on this issue.”
Customers aren’t the only ones getting sick of the turbulence.
Travel agent Barbara Broomel says Air Canada has been “very hard” to reach, leaving her torn about whether a tour group should make its next $6,000 payment for a European trip that may yet be cancelled.
Air Canada, which has cut flying by about 90 per cent for the next two months, did not respond to a request for comment.
Its website states that “cancellations that are caused by COVID-19 are beyond our control,” but that the company will provide “a flight credit of equal value for a future ticket purchased within 24 months” of the cancellation date.
Air Canada, which netted $1.48 billion in profit last year, has seen its share price soar over the past decade, outperforming all other Toronto Stock Exchange companies to earn a 3,575 per cent return between 2010 and 2019, CEO Calin Rovinescu noted in February.