The Trudeau government is promising to beef up air passenger protection rules in the wake of a chaotic holiday travel season that saw hundreds of Canadian stranded far from home. Speaking to a special session of a House of Commons committee on Thursday (Jan. 12), Transport Minister Omar Alghabra suggested that Ottawa is looking to changing regulations so that more of the onus is on airlines to show why they don’t have to compensate a mistreated customer, The Globe and Mail reports. According to the Globe, Alghabra said passengers are too often told by airlines that they’re not entitled to Read more
Ottawa
VIA Rail Canada says it sorry for a pre-Christmas incident that left passengers stranded on a train for 18 hours, and it’s promising to do better. The company issued the following statement today regarding the travel delays and train cancellations which occurred from December 23 to December 26: “A severe winter storm along with the derailment of a freight train disrupted VIA Rail’s operations from December 23 to 26. Unfortunately, a number of trains, particularly along the Québec City–Windsor corridor and elsewhere in Eastern Canada, were cancelled or delayed for extended periods. We appreciate that passengers were looking forward to Read more
A prominent Liberal in the Justin Trudeau government says he wants to hear from Sunwing and VIA Rail about the travel chaos that many Canadians endured over the holidays. MP Peter Schiefke, the Member of Parliament for Vaudreuil-Soulanges in Quebec and chair of the federal government’s transportation and infrastructure committee, tweeted on Tuesday that both companies need to be held accountable for a disastrous holiday season. Sunwing cancelled flights between Canada and Mexico a couple days before Christmas, leaving hundreds of Canadians stranded during the holidays. Passengers on a VIA Rail train headed from Ottawa to Toronto were forced to Read more
Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says Canadian airlines are “breaking their word” with the public and that the Trudeau government isn’t doing enough to help Canadian travellers left stranded at airports across the country. Speaking with journalists in Ottawa on Friday, Poilievre laid the blame for the chaos endured by thousands of Canadian passengers over the last week at the foot of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, arguing airports and airlines are federally regulated and therefore a responsibility of the federal government, Global News reports. “This is a federal problem,” Poilievre said. The lead-up to Christmas was a disaster for many Canadian Read more
A major snowstorm in southern British Columbia is having “an uprecedented impact” on flights at Vancouver International Airport, officials said today. “The winter storm and severe snowfall has had an unprecedented impact on flights and operations at YVR, with mass cancellations. Travel continues to be significantly impacted this morning & we anticipate cancellations to continue through the day and the week ahead,” airport officials said on their @flyyvr Twitter feed. FlightAware.com reports 146 cancelled flights as of 1:45 p.m. Pacific Standard Time today, or roughly 33% of all daily flights. “We recognize the affect these cancellations have on our community. Read more
