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.
TORONTO – A 21-year-old man is dead after what police are describing as an “interaction” with officers during the execution of a search warrant in Toronto.
York Regional Police say their officers were executing a search warrant in the area of Evans Avenue and Sherway Gardens Road at approximately 5 a.m. Monday.
Police say officers had an “interaction” with a man.
They say a 21-year-old man suffered life-threatening injuries and was taken to hospital.
Police say the man was pronounced dead there.
Ontario’s Special Investigations Unit is investigating.
The watchdog agency investigates the conduct of police officers that may have resulted in death, serious injury, sexual assault and/or discharge of a firearm at a person.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
The head of a group that helps homeless people in Saint John, N.B., says it is mourning the death of a 58-year-old man whose body was found in an encampment over the weekend.
Johanne McCullough of Street Team Saint John says John Surette was known for his kindness and for taking care of people around him.
The Saint John Police Force say Surette’s body was found in a tent near Paradise Row in the north end of the city Saturday morning.
Investigators say the circumstances of the death are not considered criminal in nature and an autopsy has been scheduled.
Surrette was found not far from where three people died last winter in two separate tent fires.
McCullough says the community will remember Surrette for his helpfulness and generosity.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
OTTAWA – Liberal House leader Karina Gould lambasted Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre as a “fraudster” this morning after he said the federal carbon price is going to cause a “nuclear winter.”
Gould was speaking just before the House of Commons is set to reopen following the summer break.
“What I heard yesterday from Mr. Poilievre was so over the top, so irresponsible, so immature, and something that only a fraudster would do,” she said from Parliament Hill.
On Sunday Poilievre said increasing the carbon price will cause a “nuclear winter,” painting a dystopian picture of people starving and freezing because they can’t afford food or heat due the carbon price.
He said the Liberals’ obsession with carbon pricing is “an existential threat to our economy and our way of life.”
The carbon price currently adds about 17.6 cents to every litre of gasoline, but that cost is offset by carbon rebates mailed to Canadians every three months. The Parliamentary Budget Office provided analysis that showed eight in 10 households receive more from the rebates than they pay in carbon pricing, though the office also warned that long-term economic effects could harm jobs and wage growth.
Gould accused Poilievre of ignoring the rebates, and refusing to tell Canadians how he would make life more affordable while battling climate change. The Liberals have also accused the Conservatives of dismissing the expertise of more than 200 economists who wrote a letter earlier this year describing the carbon price as the least expensive, most efficient way to lower emissions.
Poilievre is pushing for the other opposition parties to vote the government down and trigger what he calls a “carbon tax election.”
The recent decision by the NDP to break its political pact with the government makes an early election more likely, but there does not seem to be an interest from either the Bloc Québécois or the NDP to have it happen immediately.
Poilievre intends to bring a non-confidence motion against the government as early as this week but would likely need both the Bloc and NDP to support it.
Gould said she has no “crystal ball” over when or how often Poilievre might try to bring down the government
“I know that the end of the supply and confidence agreement makes things a bit different, but really all it does is returns us to a normal minority parliament,” she said. “And that means that we will work case-by-case, legislation-by-legislation with whichever party wants to work with us. I have already been in touch with all of the House leaders in the opposition parties and my job now is to make Parliament work for Canadians.”
She also insisted the government has listened to the concerns raised by Canadians, and received the message when the Liberals lost a Toronto byelection in June in seat the party had held since 1997.
“We certainly got the message from Toronto-St. Paul’s and have spent the summer reflecting on what that means and are coming back to Parliament, I think, very clearly focused on ensuring that Canadians are at the centre of everything that we do moving forward,” she said.
The Liberals are bracing, however, for the possibility of another blow Monday night, in a tight race to hold a Montreal seat in a byelection there. Voters in LaSalle—Émard—Verdun are casting ballots today to replace former justice minister David Lametti, who was removed from cabinet in 2023 and resigned as an MP in January.
The Conservatives and NDP are also in a tight race in Elmwood-Transcona, a Winnipeg seat that has mostly been held by the NDP over the last several decades.
There are several key bills making their way through the legislative process, including the online harms act and the NDP-endorsed pharmacare bill, which is currently in the Senate.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
