Canada: Airlines demand 'shared accountability' for flight disruptions

The National Airlines Council has released a report calling on Ottawa to implement "shared accountability" in aviation, with the goal of smoother travel — and across-the-board responsibility for flight disruptions. Released Thursday, the proposals come precisely three weeks after the House of Commons tabled legislation to overhaul passenger rights, and five days before a Senate committee hearing on the bill. Post-pandemic travel turmoil last summer and over the winter holidays prompted the Liberal government to lay out sweeping changes to Canada's passenger rights charter in an effort to tighten compensation loopholes and toughen penalties. The airlines council recommendations include imposing service standards on industry players, which range from airports to Nav Canada and the Canada Border Services Agency. "They may have internal key performance indicators ... but there's no accountability for them. There's certainly no public reporting on them," council CEO Jeff Morrison said in a phone interview. "Even if, let's say, an airport had a particular standard of getting your luggage through its luggage belt in a certain period of time, we don't know what that is." If those service standards are not upheld and cause flight disruptions, travellers should be entitled to compensation doled out from a pool that is funded by transport "actors" — other than airlines — and overseen by the Canadian Transportation Agency, the report says. "We don't want to create a complex kind of system," Morrison said, acknowledging that he's open to alternatives to avoid a tangle of red tape for customers.<br/>