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I believe the analysis. Here in Canada, the government passed a law not that long ago (during the pandemic) to enshrine rights of passengers for delayed and can

I believe the analysis. Here in Canada, the government passed a law not that long ago (during the pandemic) to enshrine rights of passengers for delayed and cancelled flights, which included right to specific amounts of monetary compensation in those scenarios. The law, however, had an exception, where no compensation is due if the flight is delayed or cancelled due to a safety issue. Lo and behold, the airlines have started classifying almost every delay and cancellation as a safety issue [1] and denying compensation claims left and right. [1] Here is an example of how ridiculously far the airlines have gone in claiming everything is a safety issue, even when it is things completely within their power to control: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/air-canada-denies-compensation-1.6544234 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/air-canada-denies-compensatio...

jackmott 4y ago
Surely these are engineered in cooperation with corporations so that politicians can get their win with the electorate and eat their corporate cash too?
genocidicbunny 4y ago
They should make an addendum that any safety-related cancellations require a full inspection/re-certification of the aircraft that takes either a lot of time or a lot of money to go through. And any crew involved will be required to pass some sort of check flight or related process (at company cost of course.) Make spurious 'safety' cancellations expensive, very expensive.
- josephcsible 4y ago
  That would defeat the purpose. The point of the carveout is so that we don't accidentally incentivize the airlines to fly a flight that should be canceled for safety reasons, and this would do exactly that.
  - ALittleLight 4y ago
    Perhaps they could require the people who make the go/no-go decision on flight safety to visit a prison every three months and receive a lecture on how this will be their new home if they knowingly approve a plane not safe to fly.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      Threatening people does not improve safety, as people will tend to hide the issues instead of exposing them so they're fixed.
    - justsomehnguy 4y ago
      You are forgetting what the decision to blanket everything as a safety issue came not from the people who make the go/no-go decision on flight safety. As a sibling comment says it would be just swept under the rug until planes start to fall.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    Indeed. I feel like so many of these arguments that “airlines are making up fake safety or weather cancellation reasons; when’s the last time an airline crashed from a safety or weather reason; they’re over-stating the risks just to get out of paying penalties!” seemingly without reflecting on why the second clause is the case.
causi 4y ago
The law, however, had an exception, where no compensation is due if the flight is delayed or cancelled due to a safety issue. This makes no sense at all. If I order a pizza and it doesn't show up the reason it doesn't show up is completely irrelevant; they still owe me my money back.
- ammar2 4y ago
  I think the reasoning would be to disincentivize airlines from potentially flying a plane that is unsafe to avoid paying out.
  - Zuiii 4y ago
    Then have a panel from canada's regulatory body review every case and fine those who misclassify their cancellation, then have an independent audit of those panels to avoid regulatory capture.
    - akira2501 4y ago
      That's labor intensive. You could always set a threshold.. where if more than X% of your flights are canceled due to safety issues in any month, your maintenance operation gets fully audited.
    - jonahx 4y ago
      All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection, except for the problem of too many layers of indirection.
      - Zuiii 4y ago
        The idea of having multiple layers is to make foul play more difficult to cover up; i.e the chances of someone screwing up grows exponentially with every person you add.
        pixelfarmer 4y ago
neilv 4y ago
That's interesting. At first glance, a safety issue looks plausible. But if it turns out someone is playing business optimization games with safety issues, by consciously creating the safety issues, with the intention of using them to get out of some other regulatory compliance... that doesn't sound in the spirit of the aviation safety programs. In the US, I suspect that pretty much any personnel who observed this could raise it as an issue through an FAA safety reporting program. There are some protections for reporters. (These programs, and the people and organizations who participate in them, are a big part of why aviation is as safe as it is. It's something a lot of people seem to take very seriously. It's pretty inspiring, IMHO, and if only we could collectively believe in other common goals like this, and execute as well.)
- Sakos 4y ago
  It's likely that there just isn't any legal oversight. They made this loophole, but there are intentionally no provisions to ensure it isn't abused. This is something that would need to be legislated again, but if they screwed up this badly this time (on purpose), I doubt that'll ever happen.
  - neilv 4y ago
    Aviation safety has oversight, whether or not this consumer-oriented legislation does.
    - Sakos 4y ago
      Of course, that's not what I said.
ericd 4y ago
I don’t know if they’re operating yet for Canadian flights, but there are at least a few companies that will go through the hassle of battling it out with European airlines in exchange for a cut of the proceeds. Worked for us when Swiss tried to give us the runaround by inappropriately using a similar exception to the one you’re describing.
WalterBright 4y ago
On the other hand, punishing an airline for a delay due to a safety issue can have worse consequences.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  > punishing an airline The airline isn't being "punished" - they're being required to either complete a contract, or to compensate their counterparty for their failure to complete. To take the example upthread, if the pizzaiolo drops a screw in my pizza, the resulting safety issue doesn't void the contract; he has to go off and make me a new pizza, or give my money back. It's not a punishment. If he can't complete on the contracts he makes, he has to stop selling pizzas or go broke. I don't know any good reason why airlines shouldn't be subject to normal contract law.
flipbrad 4y ago
Lying to avoid a loss would be fraud, and therefore a pretty dangerous game.
- ddeck 4y ago
  But unfortunately pretty routine. In two out of two cases where I've claimed compensation for delayed/cancelled flights under the EU law, the airlines have outright lied about the causes and denied compensation. In both cases, they were forced to pay out in arbitration after the arbitor determined that their stated causes were false (e.g. providing the tail number for a different aircraft that was legitimately delayed) , but there was no penalty for lying. In such an environment, it's quite rational for them to lie and deny.
perryizgr8 4y ago
The error is in trying to handle such a specific situation in the law. This should be sorted out using some form of court. If a customer is unhappy about any aspect of the service from any business, he can approach the court and the judge will decide what is appropriate. No super specific laws.
- switch007 4y ago
  Courts are indeed famously level playing fields and easy and cheap to access for the common man.
  - perryizgr8 4y ago
    If courts being inaccessible is the problem, then we should solve that. Not introduce insanely specific laws like this which are prone to abuse.
Ekaros 4y ago
We need some 3-strike rules for companies. Three 3-strikes like wrong reasons used and you are permanently out. Your property is confiscated and sold, wages are paid out, any debtors are paid if there is any money and rest is forfeited as penalty to state.
- subradios 4y ago
  "Be a good person" is not a law I want anyone writing, because such a policy relies on the moral fortitude of random executive bureaucrats. "Wrong" reason is subjective. Tickets are nonrefundable because otherwise the network doesn't work, financially. Every hole in that increases costs far beyond the refunds themselves further down the line. Air travel is not a high margin, luxury product, it's a lot margin mass market product with tons of competition - ergo costs are cut wherever possible. When you force airlines to take on costs for moral reasons, they basically are obligated to find as narrow an application of the moral reasoning as possible to keep costs down.
  - remote_phone 4y ago
    > Tickets are nonrefundable because otherwise the network doesn't work, financially. This is 100% false. Southwest Airlines is one of the most profitable airlines in the US and their refund policy for refundable flights is a full refund up to 10 mins before the flight. For nonrefundable flights you get full credit if you cancel up to 10 mins before your flight, with no additional fees. During the pandemic, ALL airlines moved to full credit with no change fees if you cancelled your flight. Previously they would have absurd $200 change fees or loss of your flight. The idea that airlines can’t survive with flexible, consumer friendly policies is a lie. Things like the check in fees or fuel surcharge are pure profit.
    - xwdv 4y ago
      The airlines were buoyed by PPP loans.
      - Retric 4y ago
switch007 4y ago
Entirely predictable if you follow the history of the same protections in the EU. Many get out clauses and varying interpretations of the legislation meant lots of weaselling out claims. Many things were “extraordinary circumstances” There have been various court cases to clarify and strengthen the regulations. It will take another 5 years probably for the Canadian regulations to have a serious effect which gives the airlines plenty of time to shaft customers in another manner.
noisy_boy 4y ago
> Lo and behold, the airlines have started classifying almost every delay and cancellation as a safety issue Then the regulators should be asking why there are so many safety issues? Seems like by the airlines' own admission, this is a perfect ground for a full investigation and penalties in case the issues are found to be misclassified under the category of safety.
- sandworm101 4y ago
  They only care about safety issues during flight. Flights that dont happen are not a "flight safety" issue. The safest trip is always the one that doesnt try to leave the ground.
  - ct0 4y ago
    Is it a trip if it doesn't leave the ground?
  - noisy_boy 4y ago
    That is an odd take - so any shit can happen to the customers as long as they don't get in the air? IMHO they should also care about customers being cheated out of compensation on account of misclassification of the reason for the flights being cancelled.
  - nix23 4y ago
    Most safety issues to planes happen on the ground...just saying.
    - sandworm101 4y ago
      I said try to leave the ground. Planes that never leave the gate are generally rather safe.
      - nix23 4y ago
        No...that was was my point they are not.
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
> Here is an example of how ridiculously far the airlines have gone in claiming everything is a safety issue, These outlandish claims wouldn't work nearly as well as they do if claims of safety didn't cause a large part of the population to turn off their brain and side with whoever's making the claim regardless of the details. Safety is often used as one of our modern analogs of "god's will."
flenserboy 4y ago
Such things are rarely, if ever, included accidentally. There is far too much collusion between regulators and the regulated, and that hand-in-hand attitude moves upstream to those who write the laws and give them to the legislators to introduce.

jackmott 4y ago

Surely these are engineered in cooperation with corporations so that politicians can get their win with the electorate and eat their corporate cash too?

genocidicbunny 4y ago

They should make an addendum that any safety-related cancellations require a full inspection/re-certification of the aircraft that takes either a lot of time or a lot of money to go through. And any crew involved will be required to pass some sort of check flight or related process (at company cost of course.) Make spurious 'safety' cancellations expensive, very expensive.

josephcsible 4y ago
That would defeat the purpose. The point of the carveout is so that we don't accidentally incentivize the airlines to fly a flight that should be canceled for safety reasons, and this would do exactly that.
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  Perhaps they could require the people who make the go/no-go decision on flight safety to visit a prison every three months and receive a lecture on how this will be their new home if they knowingly approve a plane not safe to fly.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Threatening people does not improve safety, as people will tend to hide the issues instead of exposing them so they're fixed.
  - justsomehnguy 4y ago
    You are forgetting what the decision to blanket everything as a safety issue came not from the people who make the go/no-go decision on flight safety. As a sibling comment says it would be just swept under the rug until planes start to fall.
- sokoloff 4y ago
  Indeed. I feel like so many of these arguments that “airlines are making up fake safety or weather cancellation reasons; when’s the last time an airline crashed from a safety or weather reason; they’re over-stating the risks just to get out of paying penalties!” seemingly without reflecting on why the second clause is the case.

causi 4y ago

The law, however, had an exception, where no compensation is due if the flight is delayed or cancelled due to a safety issue. This makes no sense at all. If I order a pizza and it doesn't show up the reason it doesn't show up is completely irrelevant; they still owe me my money back.

ammar2 4y ago
I think the reasoning would be to disincentivize airlines from potentially flying a plane that is unsafe to avoid paying out.
- Zuiii 4y ago
  Then have a panel from canada's regulatory body review every case and fine those who misclassify their cancellation, then have an independent audit of those panels to avoid regulatory capture.
  - akira2501 4y ago
    That's labor intensive. You could always set a threshold.. where if more than X% of your flights are canceled due to safety issues in any month, your maintenance operation gets fully audited.
  - jonahx 4y ago
    All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection, except for the problem of too many layers of indirection.
    - Zuiii 4y ago
      The idea of having multiple layers is to make foul play more difficult to cover up; i.e the chances of someone screwing up grows exponentially with every person you add.
      - pixelfarmer 4y ago

neilv 4y ago

That's interesting. At first glance, a safety issue looks plausible. But if it turns out someone is playing business optimization games with safety issues, by consciously creating the safety issues, with the intention of using them to get out of some other regulatory compliance... that doesn't sound in the spirit of the aviation safety programs. In the US, I suspect that pretty much any personnel who observed this could raise it as an issue through an FAA safety reporting program. There are some protections for reporters. (These programs, and the people and organizations who participate in them, are a big part of why aviation is as safe as it is. It's something a lot of people seem to take very seriously. It's pretty inspiring, IMHO, and if only we could collectively believe in other common goals like this, and execute as well.)

Sakos 4y ago
It's likely that there just isn't any legal oversight. They made this loophole, but there are intentionally no provisions to ensure it isn't abused. This is something that would need to be legislated again, but if they screwed up this badly this time (on purpose), I doubt that'll ever happen.
- neilv 4y ago
  Aviation safety has oversight, whether or not this consumer-oriented legislation does.
  - Sakos 4y ago
    Of course, that's not what I said.

ericd 4y ago

I don’t know if they’re operating yet for Canadian flights, but there are at least a few companies that will go through the hassle of battling it out with European airlines in exchange for a cut of the proceeds. Worked for us when Swiss tried to give us the runaround by inappropriately using a similar exception to the one you’re describing.

WalterBright 4y ago

On the other hand, punishing an airline for a delay due to a safety issue can have worse consequences.

denton-scratch 4y ago
> punishing an airline The airline isn't being "punished" - they're being required to either complete a contract, or to compensate their counterparty for their failure to complete. To take the example upthread, if the pizzaiolo drops a screw in my pizza, the resulting safety issue doesn't void the contract; he has to go off and make me a new pizza, or give my money back. It's not a punishment. If he can't complete on the contracts he makes, he has to stop selling pizzas or go broke. I don't know any good reason why airlines shouldn't be subject to normal contract law.

flipbrad 4y ago

Lying to avoid a loss would be fraud, and therefore a pretty dangerous game.

ddeck 4y ago
But unfortunately pretty routine. In two out of two cases where I've claimed compensation for delayed/cancelled flights under the EU law, the airlines have outright lied about the causes and denied compensation. In both cases, they were forced to pay out in arbitration after the arbitor determined that their stated causes were false (e.g. providing the tail number for a different aircraft that was legitimately delayed) , but there was no penalty for lying. In such an environment, it's quite rational for them to lie and deny.

perryizgr8 4y ago

The error is in trying to handle such a specific situation in the law. This should be sorted out using some form of court. If a customer is unhappy about any aspect of the service from any business, he can approach the court and the judge will decide what is appropriate. No super specific laws.

switch007 4y ago
Courts are indeed famously level playing fields and easy and cheap to access for the common man.
- perryizgr8 4y ago
  If courts being inaccessible is the problem, then we should solve that. Not introduce insanely specific laws like this which are prone to abuse.

Ekaros 4y ago

We need some 3-strike rules for companies. Three 3-strikes like wrong reasons used and you are permanently out. Your property is confiscated and sold, wages are paid out, any debtors are paid if there is any money and rest is forfeited as penalty to state.

subradios 4y ago
"Be a good person" is not a law I want anyone writing, because such a policy relies on the moral fortitude of random executive bureaucrats. "Wrong" reason is subjective. Tickets are nonrefundable because otherwise the network doesn't work, financially. Every hole in that increases costs far beyond the refunds themselves further down the line. Air travel is not a high margin, luxury product, it's a lot margin mass market product with tons of competition - ergo costs are cut wherever possible. When you force airlines to take on costs for moral reasons, they basically are obligated to find as narrow an application of the moral reasoning as possible to keep costs down.
- remote_phone 4y ago
  > Tickets are nonrefundable because otherwise the network doesn't work, financially. This is 100% false. Southwest Airlines is one of the most profitable airlines in the US and their refund policy for refundable flights is a full refund up to 10 mins before the flight. For nonrefundable flights you get full credit if you cancel up to 10 mins before your flight, with no additional fees. During the pandemic, ALL airlines moved to full credit with no change fees if you cancelled your flight. Previously they would have absurd $200 change fees or loss of your flight. The idea that airlines can’t survive with flexible, consumer friendly policies is a lie. Things like the check in fees or fuel surcharge are pure profit.
  - xwdv 4y ago
    The airlines were buoyed by PPP loans.
    - Retric 4y ago

switch007 4y ago

Entirely predictable if you follow the history of the same protections in the EU. Many get out clauses and varying interpretations of the legislation meant lots of weaselling out claims. Many things were “extraordinary circumstances” There have been various court cases to clarify and strengthen the regulations. It will take another 5 years probably for the Canadian regulations to have a serious effect which gives the airlines plenty of time to shaft customers in another manner.

noisy_boy 4y ago

> Lo and behold, the airlines have started classifying almost every delay and cancellation as a safety issue Then the regulators should be asking why there are so many safety issues? Seems like by the airlines' own admission, this is a perfect ground for a full investigation and penalties in case the issues are found to be misclassified under the category of safety.

sandworm101 4y ago
They only care about safety issues during flight. Flights that dont happen are not a "flight safety" issue. The safest trip is always the one that doesnt try to leave the ground.
- ct0 4y ago
  Is it a trip if it doesn't leave the ground?
- noisy_boy 4y ago
  That is an odd take - so any shit can happen to the customers as long as they don't get in the air? IMHO they should also care about customers being cheated out of compensation on account of misclassification of the reason for the flights being cancelled.
- nix23 4y ago
  Most safety issues to planes happen on the ground...just saying.
  - sandworm101 4y ago
    I said try to leave the ground. Planes that never leave the gate are generally rather safe.
    - nix23 4y ago
      No...that was was my point they are not.

dsfyu404ed 4y ago

> Here is an example of how ridiculously far the airlines have gone in claiming everything is a safety issue, These outlandish claims wouldn't work nearly as well as they do if claims of safety didn't cause a large part of the population to turn off their brain and side with whoever's making the claim regardless of the details. Safety is often used as one of our modern analogs of "god's will."

flenserboy 4y ago

Such things are rarely, if ever, included accidentally. There is far too much collusion between regulators and the regulated, and that hand-in-hand attitude moves upstream to those who write the laws and give them to the legislators to introduce.