An air passenger rights advocate says the botched Swoop Airlines flight from Cancun to Hamilton is an example of how Canada’s new compensation rules fail to serve the public.
Those schedule to board Flight WO651 say they had trouble getting information from the airline, were offered “dingy” places to stay in unsafe areas of Cancún without transportation and in some cases, told they’d need to wait days for a new flight home.
“It’s incredibly troubling. It demonstrates how poorly the situation was handled,” Lukacs says.
Swoop told CBC News Wednesday it cancelled the trip set to land at John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport after a flight attendant on the plane was injured inbound to Cancún International Airport before Flight WO651.
“Industry regulations stipulate that we cannot operate a flight without a full complement of flight attendants,” the airline wrote in a statement.
Lukacs says Swoop, which is owned by WestJet, should have had a back-up crew.
“This is not an unusual situation and it’s a perfectly reasonable expectation to have a backup crew at a popular destination,” he says.
Lukacs also adds the airline should have immediately rebooked flights to other airlines and offered transportation to hotels in the area.
Swoop tells CBC in a statement Thursday it does not arrange back-up flight crews in every location it flies to “due to the unlikelihood of a flight attendant becoming ill or injured during a flight.”
“Travellers were automatically rebooked on the next available Swoop flight. However, we understand that travel arrangements are unique to travellers and, if the Swoop flight was not satisfactory, we are following our Flight Interruption Policies which include booking travellers on an alternate flight with a carrier that Swoop has a commercial agreement with,” Swoop writes.
Airline passenger advocate Gabor Lukacs says new regulations do a better job of protecting Swoop than customers aboard its botched flight, but he thinks passengers still have a chance to sue for damages. (Robert Short/CBC)
Customers say they paid hundreds of dollars for food, transportation, hotels and flights they re-booked on their own.
Shannon Dickinson, 35, a law clerk in Hamilton, tells CBC News she hasn’t tallied the entire amount because she’s scared of the total cost but says she has forked out at least $500 — some of which includes what she says is a $15 fee to contact Swoop customer service.
“They can’t just dump you in the middle of somewhere and say, ‘you’re on your own,’ ” Dickinson says.
Yesterday, Dickinson and other passengers taking a United Airlines flight back to Toronto from Houston started making a passenger list to band together and take the airline to court.
“I’m about the principle of it,” she says. “They really messed up and put a lot of people in danger.”
Current compensation rules have ‘loopholes’
Lukacs thinks Swoop will use the flight attendant’s injury to try and dodge lawsuits.
Under the current rules, if a flight is delayed, airlines have to provide updates every 30 minutes until confirming a new departure time and it must offer any new information as soon as possible.
Passengers on delayed flights can contact the airline and file a claim for compensation within one year of the trip.
The airline has 30 days to pay up or explain why it believes compensation isn’t warranted.
Those who don’t agree with the airline’s decision can take it up with the Canadian Transportation Agency, which Lukacs claims has “cozy relationships with airlines” and forces the passenger to prove delays or cancellations could have been prevented.
The rules also state Swoop, which claims to be a smaller airline, has to pay between $125 to $500 to passengers for applicable flights when flyers are delayed by three hours or more in reaching their final destination.
But unlike European Union regulations, airlines don’t have to compensate customers if uncontrollable factors such as bad weather or mechanical problems discovered outside of routine maintenance checks delays or cancels the trip.
“This is a point where the new rules are causing lots of problems,” Lukacs says.
“Swoop claims to be a small airline, which is dubious given its owned by WestJet … The set of new rules is a way of deceiving the public. It’s more protection for the airlines.”
And that compensation would cover out-of-pocket expenses and missed time from work.
“The passengers should group up and sue swoop under Montreal convention and new rules and see what [the courts] say,” Lukacs says.
“They may have to go to small claims, but Swoop will have to prove there was nothing they could have done to prevent it.”
Swoop has a flight scheduled to leave Cancún at 5:05 p.m. and land in Hamilton at 8:45 p.m. today. The flight has been delayed to leave at 5:40 p.m. and is expected to arrive in Hamilton at 9:20 p.m. today.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
