The Canadian Transportation Agency has proposed new rules that would facilitate refunds to pax.
In recent months, Ottawa’s relief packages to airlines were made on the condition of delivering refunds many pax have waited on for months.
According to the Canadian Press, the new, proposed rules would mean that airlines would have to issue a refund within 7 days for a credit card purchase and twenty days for payment via cash, cheque or points following cancellations that are out of an airline’s control. Airlines will only be able to provide alternate payment - like a flight credit - if it’s worth more than the ticket value and they’ll have to have their customers’ consent.
Further, airlines must also provide refunds for flights cancelled because of factors within their control. The new proposed rules include an offer to rebook passengers on another airline’s flight that would leave within 9 hours of their original departure.
This announcement comes on the heels of several newsworthy customer complaints following attempts to get their flights refunded.
Last week, Global News spoke with a New Brunswick family that’s out of pocket $7,000 after WestJet Vacations canceled their trip to the Dominican Republic in MAR 2020. The family was given a $7,100 voucher, but says they’re not currently medically fit to travel, and they’ve been unable to secure a refund instead of a credit.
Gabor Lukacs, the president of Air Passenger Rights, told Global, ““It is not simply a matter that consumers want their money back. It is a question that if you don’t refund people, you will not get customers.”
WestJet was also the subject of a CBC News inquiry into several canceled JUL flights where customers were told they were not entitled to a refund.
The CBC spoke to four potential passengers who all booked in JUN, would have left in JUL and then were rebooked on a longer flight with a new stopover. In two cases, the flights were on different dates. All four requested a refund only to be given a credit, and three wound up rebooking with a different airline and essentially paying twice for their trip.
Following several back-and-forth emails with CBC, WestJet determined these customers deserved their refunds.
“We apologize for the inconvenience and are reviewing our processes to make necessary improvements," said WestJet spokesperson Morgan Bell in an email to the CBC.
These reported incidents are just a sampling of situations that airlines and their pax find themselves trying to navigate. Refund challenges reflect the changing policies that make refunds complex and uncertain - something the new proposed refund rules are intended to address for the future.
