The Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) has launched consultations on proposed amendments to the Air Passenger Protection Regulations (APPR) and you can help shape the outcome.

The consultation period will be open for 30 calendar days ending Aug. 10. After considering the feedback and comments received, the CTA will publish draft regulations in Canada Gazette Part I. There will be an opportunity to review and comment on the draft regulations before they are finalized, approved by the CTA and Cabinet, and published in Canada Gazette II.

More information about the consultation process can be found on the CTA website, including instructions for providing comments on the Consultation Paper. Click HERE

What is changing?

The Budget Implementation Act introduces changes to the Canada Transportation Act to clarify, simplify and strengthen the Canadian air passenger protection regime. The CTA will have to make regulations to implement these changes.

The changes to the Act are designed to strengthen Air Passenger Protection eliminate the current three categories of flight disruptions that were used to determine the compensation to which passengers were entitled.

Airlines will have to provide compensation for inconvenience to passengers when there is a flight disruption, unless there are exceptional circumstances, and airlines will have the burden to prove the situation is an exceptional circumstance. One objective of the consultations is to define these exceptions.

In addition, as a result of the legislative changes and to take into account lessons learned since the coming into force of the APPR in 2019, the CTA says it is proposing other regulatory amendments. These include amendments to assistance (standards of treatment) and communication requirements, and the defining of passenger entitlements that would apply in the case of all flight disruptions, and separately those that would apply for exceptional circumstances. Further details can be found in the Consultation Paper.

In addition to these proposed regulatory changes, the BIA brings major changes to improve the efficiency of the CTA’s dispute resolution process and it authorizes the CTA to recover from airlines the costs of processing air passenger complaints which will be the object of a separate consultation process later in 2023.

“The Canadian Transportation Agency welcomes the opportunity to improve the air passenger protection regime,” says France Pégeot, Chair and CEO of the Canadian Transportation Agency. “We are committed to improving how air passengers complaints are processed and to provide better services to Canadians.”

The complaints backlog at the regulator now tops 52,000, roughly triple the tally from a year ago and requiring two years on average per case.