An appeal court has dismissed a legal challenge presented by Westjet about an order to compensate for a passenger for a flight cancellation, which potentially establishes a precedent for other similar cases.
The Canada Transport Regulator, the Canadian Transport Agency (CTA), had ordered Westjet to pay a passenger $ 1,000 for a 2021 flight cancellation. The Federal Court of Appeals ruled on Monday that “there was no revisable error” in the CTA decision.
Westjet had maintained that the cancellation was for security purposes and, therefore, the passenger should not be required to compensate.
But the panel of three judges found that Westjet offered no evidence to the CTA to support his claim.
“The agency had to be satisfied, in a balance of probabilities and based on previous evidence, which [WestJet] He had taken reasonable measures to implement a reasonable contingency plan to mitigate the interruption of the flight that resulted from the scarcity of the crew caused by the absence of the first officer, “said the court ruling on Monday.
“The appellant directed insufficient evidence to satisfy the agency of this. I am of the opinion that the agency did not make any revisable error,” said the ruling.
According to CTA regulations, airlines are required, in certain circumstances, compensate for passengers when a flight is delayed or canceled.
Implications for other legal challenges
The case involved the passenger Owen Lareou, whose flight in July 2021 from Regina back to Ottawa was canceled, causing a delay of 21 hours.
According to the CTA, Westjet argued that a pilot had called a sickness about an hour before takeoff and a replacement could not be found in time, so the flight cancellation was a security problem that does not guarantee compensation.
But the CTA, a quadjudicial and regulatory court in charge of resolving disputes between airlines and customers, ruled that Westjet “did not establish enough” that the flight cancellation was inevitable, so it ordered the airline to compensate for Lareou $ 1,000.
Monday’s failure could have implications for other cases in which airlines have challenged CTA decisions. Air Canada, which was intervening in the case of Lareou, has also presented legal challenges to the agency’s decisions.
CBC News has asked Westjet comments about the Court’s ruling.
