Siok Har Lim was nervous for his trip to Europe last November. Montreal’s wife was not an experienced traveler, she had never visited countries on her itinerary and barely spoke English.
Lim’s multi-pleg trip through Germany and Hungary was going without problems until he arrived at Budapest airport to fly home and learned that Air Canada had canceled his return flight.
“He was very scared and did not know what to do,” Lim to Go public told Cantonese, that his niece translated.
After much confusion, an Air Canada agent explained that the Lim ticket was canceled because it apparently had not had a previous flight from Munich to Berlin and was considered a “not presumed.”
“I don’t understand why Air Canada is saying what they are saying,” Lim recalled. “Because I actually approached that flight.”
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Not wanting to be stranded in a foreign country on your own, without the capacity to communicate with anyone, and only one hour before your flight left, Lim was forced to buy a new ticket home, for $ 2,550.
“She is an older citizen with limited income,” said her niece, ai li lim. “Obviously that cost was really stressful for her.”
A Air Canada canceled a handful of passengers because the airline had no record to take previous flights. The airline is called a rare malfunction, but others say it is a security problem.
Go public learned about five other people that Air Canada also considered “no shows” Previous flight.
The cases are reasons for concern, since airlines need to know exactly how many people are on the plane and who they are, says an expert in methods of boarding passengers in the planes.
“If it is a systemic problem, such as their computer systems that do not talk to each other, they should fix it,” said John Milne, associate professor of engineering and management at Clarkson University in Potsdam, NY
“Meanwhile, how can you … cancel people back flights when you know that your records are not reliable?”
That information is even more critical in extreme situations, such as American Airlines accident last month in Washington, Milne said.
“What happens if a plane falls and the airline is not really aware of everyone on board?” said.
An Air Canada spokesman said that in each case, the customer’s flight “was not properly recorded” due to “a human error or a technological malfunction.”
He insisted that there was no security problem because the passengers went through the security of the airport and had to validate their identification at the door before the approach.
He did not approach the implications of not knowing how many people are on a flight in the case of an emergency. Nor did he approach why Air Canada continued to insist that the passengers were not on previous flights, ignoring evidence otherwise.
Air Canada offers a $ 100 coupon
When Lim returned to Montreal, he tried to obtain compensation from Air Canada. The airline said it should look for the Swiss air payment, the operational airline for Air Canada’s flight from Budapest, and offered a $ 100 coupon as a “good will gesture.”
Then he turned to the travel agent who booked the trip to help.
Despite the agent who forwards the boarding pass from the limm-berlin flight and offers to provide additional tests, such as taxi receipts from Berlin airport to a hotel, the bill of the Berlin hotel and the photos of Lim posing at the reference points of Berlin. refund the ticket.
“He felt a little gas, if I can call it that,” said Lim’s niece, ai-li lim. “Because obviously he took the flight.”
Air Canada also incorrectly considered Garth Jackson a “no show” on a flight from Toronto to Tampa, Florida, last September and canceled his return flight.
Even a selfie taken aboard the plane that supposedly did not approach was not enough to convince Air Canada that he had made a mistake. He was forced to buy a new ticket to get home.
The airline finally admitted that there had been a “boarding error” reimbursed the cost of the new ticket and offered a coupon of $ 500, which it rejected because it did not cover other costs incurred.
Like ‘a novel by Franz Kafka’
Similarly, Levan Ratkov offered evidence: shipping passes, luggage labels and a family’s selfie aboard the plane that they allegedly lost in March 2022. But the airline insisted that they were not on the flight.
“Disappear as a human … It seems that I am in a novel by Franz Kafka,” Ratkov said, referring to the Czech novelist whose protagonists face surreal predicaments.
Ratkov was forced to pay $ 2,000, the cheapest tickets he could find, to take his family to Toronto from his ski journey at Banff, Alta.
The passenger goes to court
Christopher Bailey de Vancouver was so exasperated for his alleged “No Show” in October 2023, which cost him $ 1,070, took Air Canada to a small claims court.
“It was absolutely ridiculous,” Bailey said. “I kept thinking, this cannot be true. This is not happening because it makes absolutely no meaning, what they are saying.”
Only after delivering the demand notice, Air Canada offered to reimburse him the second ticket he had to buy, but Bailey refused to establish himself, since he was also demanding for $ 8,500 in general damages for stress.
In the Court, the judge punished Air Canada, writing in a decision that Bailey had more evidence than most people had, including his boarding pass for Montreal’s flight to St. John, and a receipt of ordered drinks on board, to show that he was not a “no show.”
“It is difficult to think about any other proof that a person could have provided,” the judge wrote, “and yet Air Canada continued to take the position, through his rejection of a refund, which [Bailey] He hadn’t been a passenger. “
A representative of the airline declared that a problem within the Air Canada system “could not show that the aircraft in question had a 34A seat”, so the manifesto had no Bailey record on the plane.
The judge granted Bailey his judicial fees and $ 2,000 in damages for his “inconveniences.”
An Air Canada spokesman said the company “is reaching these customers to apologize” and “rectify the situation.”
The spokesman told Go public such incidents are “extremely rare”, but that Air Canada is “working to mitigate such events” and “improve the management of our clients” if they occur again.
A Transport Canada spokesman said that the regulatory agency takes any incident that can affect “security” and that there will be “breach.”
He declined to comment on these specific incidents.
Meanwhile, Siok Har Lim says that he is still waiting to be reimbursed by the ticket that should not have had to buy to get home.
She says the experience has made her doubt another trip.
“I’m very afraid that something like this happens again,” he said. “And I will be stranded in a foreign country, I can’t return home.”
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