By Chris Beach

Northern View

Northern View – Awful Canadian airlines

Mar 29, 2023 | 4:48 PM

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Last week Skeena Bulkley MP Taylor Bachrach tabled a private member’s bill in Parliament to increase airline passenger protection and make it harder for airlines to avoid compensating travelers when disruptions happen within their control.

This is something the federal Liberal government should make happen, as the state of airline service and accountability in this country is atrocious and appears to be at an all-time low.

Just in the last year my own family experiences with the major airlines in Canada have been awful.

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Last spring my 1-year-old niece got dropped from our flight by accident after the airline changed the flight times, which they usually do these days.

But rather than accepting responsibility, the airline blamed us for not catching the error, then proceeded to tell us we should have been at the airport earlier (although we there early), and in the end barely managed to get my niece back on the flight before it took off.

So, while they almost ruined an entire Mexican vacation for two families before we even left Prince George, they didn’t apologize for their own mistake and they blamed us for it.

An elderly relative got stranded in the Vancouver airport a few months ago for 24 hours. She had to get a last-minute very expensive hotel room and find her own transportation back to Prince George… oh and of course they also lost her luggage.

So, she put in a claim for $1500 to cover her costs, and this Canadian airline ended up giving her back $150 dollars.

And yet another relative of mine just flew on an American discount carrier last week and he told me that the service was so good, and the flight attendants so polite, that he actually felt uncomfortable, like something was wrong.

The service on many other airlines from other countries is astronomically better than what we get here in Canada.

But it just doesn’t have to be this way, because the demand for air travel is now so high, the airlines have every opportunity to make a decent profit and provide good service and act responsibly at the same time.

There is simply no excuse for the way that airline travelers get treated in Canada.

But as MP Taylor Bachrach knows, the airlines are not going to change unless they are forced to do so.

I only hope it gets better because it simply can’t get any worse.

Editors note: The views expressed in this column do not necessarily represent the views of Pattison Media.