Fed up with federal agency delays, air passengers turn to courts for compensation instead

Many Canadians whose travel plans were derailed by flight delays or cancellations are turning to the courts rather than waiting for their complaints to be processed by the agency responsible for enforcing compensation rules. The Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) — a quasi-judicial tribunal and regulator tasked with settling disputes between airlines and customers — has been dealing with a backlog of air passenger complaints since new regulations came into place in 2019. Those regulations require an airline to compensate passengers when a flight is delayed or cancelled for a reason that is within the airline's control. That backlog spiked after a hectic summer travel season driven in part by a rise in air travel following the pandemic slump. CTA officials told a parliamentary committee in November that the agency is attempting to resolve over 30,000 complaints. It added that some complainants could be kept waiting for their cases to be resolved for as long as 18 months. That's too long for Kevin Smith of Gatineau, Que., who took matters into his own hands by taking his case to small claims court. Smith filed a complaint with the CTA in February after a flight from Vancouver to Ottawa on New Year's Eve was cancelled and rebooked for the next day. "To wait forever for the government to step in and do something about it when they promised that they would, you feel kind of helpless," Smith said.<br/>