Dear Tripped Up,
Last September, my husband and I left our children with their grandparents and set off for Ireland. Our $2,132 itinerary took us from Minneapolis to Toronto to Dublin on tickets booked on United Airlines through Expedia but ultimately operated by United’s partner Air Canada. We had boarded our flight to Toronto (and was already asleep in my seat) when the captain announced that an operator had dropped the bridge of the jet on the starboard engine. We were given hotel vouchers and told they would rebook us for the next day. Checkout time came and went without a word so we went to the airport and were told to call Air Canada customer service. An agent booked us a flight for that evening and we printed out boarding passes at an airport kiosk. But when we tried to board, we were told that the boarding passes were invalid. Finally, we were offered two options for the next day: Fly to Dublin via Newark or return to Minneapolis. We cut our losses and headed home after staying the night in Toronto at a hotel. But United only refunded us $1,087, barely half of what we paid. Air Canada reimbursed us for the second hotel and other expenses, but we believe the airlines owe us not only a full refund, but also 400 Canadians each ($295 each) under Canadian denied boarding laws. Both refused. You can help? Michelle, Edina, Minn.
Dear Michelle,
I found the 58 page envelope you sent with your story quite convincing. (He also convinced me that either you or your husband is a lawyer, which turns out to be true.)
I bypassed Expedia since your trip had already started and contacted United and Air Canada — since you were flying with an airline partner, it’s a codeshare arrangement. A United spokeswoman, Erin Jankowski, quickly sent me a statement noting that the refund you received from United was in accordance with Air Canada’s guidelines and referred all other questions to her.
Air Canada, on the other hand, took almost two weeks to get back to me and their response was abysmal.
“Our records show that these customers were not denied boarding in Toronto,” wrote Peter Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for the airline. “Instead, it appears that after their original flight to Ireland was cancelled, they chose to return to Minneapolis from Toronto rather than go to Dublin after the delay. Once this was identified, we rebooked customers on a return flight to Minneapolis.”
No compensation, no word on the $1,045 still missing from the refund and no explanation as to how you were turned away at the gate for your second flight and yet “not denied boarding”.
Air Canada did offer you and your husband a C$1,200 credit toward a future flight, Mr. Fitzpatrick wrote to me, “to explain the impact on their travel plans and experience.”
There was no response to my immediate question as to why your boarding passes did not work on the second night. In fact, it is not even clear from Mr. Fitzpatrick’s initial statement that Air Canada believed you even attempted to board, despite the boarding passes you included in the envelope you sent to me and both airlines.
I responded with more pointed questions, thanks to what I learned after reading Transport Canada’s air passenger protection regulations and speaking with Tom Oommen, the CTA’s general manager of analytics and communications.
“We have what I would call a very comprehensive holistic system of consumer protection for airlines,” he said. For example, when flight cancellations occur for reasons within an airline’s control and the airline cannot transfer passengers to another flight of its own within nine hours, it must rebook the passenger on any airline, including competitors with with which it has not entered into agreements. the United States does not impose.
Mr Oommen also noted that if a passenger is stranded in the middle of a journey and is not happy with the options to continue, the airline must offer to rebook that passenger “on a return flight to their point of origin free of charge and refund the entire ticket.”
He wouldn’t comment specifically on your case, but that’s exactly what happened to you. (The only exception to these rules is when the disruption is outside the airline’s control, Mr. Oommen said, but when a mechanical problem is caused by an airline employee or contractor, “it’s hard to project that argument”.)
There are also many cases in which Canada requires airlines to compensate passengers — between $400 and $2,400 — for flight delays, cancellations and denied boarding under the airline’s control. There is an exception where such issues have security implications, which could apply to the first night’s engine damage, but not, I think, to the second night’s inoperable boarding passes. That sounds a lot like denied boarding.
This time, you listened again before I did and forwarded me several emails from Air Canada, including one that said the carrier had approved a $400 cash payment per traveler. Mr. Fitzpatrick then emailed me to say that you will receive a full refund.
Well, you got what you asked for, but of course you’d rather have gone to Ireland. And what happened, exactly, when Air Canada refused to board you in Toronto? Mr. Fitzpatrick told me United had canceled your ticket before you even got to the gate.
I found that confusing – the boarding pass has an Air Canada ticket number on it and you hadn’t even spoken to United that day. So I contacted Ms. Jankowski at United again, who looked into the situation further and found that “United canceled the tickets after messaging the carrier, Air Canada, informing them that the tickets were not properly reissued on the rescheduled flight.”
Apparently, somewhere deep in the interface of the two carriers’ systems, your Air Canada boarding pass was canceled by United and neither airline contacted you. And that’s too bad, because Mr. Fitzpatrick later confirmed that the second flight left with empty seats.
When you decided to go home, the Air Canada representative at the airport said you should call United. The process of sorting through the mess and booking you a flight back to Minneapolis took hours and six different United agents and customer service supervisors.
Your experience is a good reason for all of us to avoid sharing codes unless necessary — such as when an itinerary includes flights operated by different airlines.
All because you originally booked Air Canada flights as United codeshares — an option you found on Expedia. When I recently did a search from Minneapolis to Dublin on Expedia for a week in April, the first two options that came up were the same route via Toronto with no price difference, one booked directly on Air Canada and the other as a codeshare in United. Assuming you saw the same thing last year, I bet if you had booked the Air Canada option, you would have arrived in Ireland, albeit a day late. All the more reason to book direct, with one airline.
There is one final mystery: Why won’t Air Canada admit that this is a denied boarding case and follow the required CTA regulations? Yes, your situation doesn’t exactly fit the agency’s official definition, which is written to describe overbooking or aircraft changes, but if an airline accidentally cancels a passenger’s ticket after they’ve already printed a boarding pass and they stop you at the gate, what IS THIS?
I presented this as a theoretical situation to Mr. Oommen of the CTA
“Classic denied boarding is what you’re describing,” he said.
That means you could deposit an extra $400 each for that second incident and put it towards a new flight to Ireland — say, on Aer Lingus, direct or via Chicago.
If you need advice on a better travel plan gone wrong, send an email to TrippedUp@nytimes.com.
