7 ms·
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
by 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 agoI think the reasoning would be to disincentivize airlines from potentially flying a plane that is unsafe to avoid paying out.
- Zuiii 4y agoThen 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 agoThat'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 agoAll problems in computer science can be solved by another level of indirection, except for the problem of too many layers of indirection.
- Zuiii 4y agoThe 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 agoThat assumes that every person you add has the ability to understand all the details plus is actually willing to do their best to find any remaining issues. Somehow this doesn't match up with my real world experience. It also assumes that convoluted rules will hinder larger companies from exploiting the rules, which is actually the other way around: The larger they are, the better they get at finding loopholes and using them for their own gains. Plus you make it increasingly more difficult to see where your regulatory body has been compromised. Humans don't work like tech, so adding more and more layers doesn't help really, and I haven't found any organizational form which can inherently prevent humans from being human, it just doesn't exist. For example, all the "paperwork" around safety only works if humans are actually interested in maximizing safety and not just filling out papers.
- pixelfarmer 4y agoNo, I would remove the exception and put up even heftier fines (i.e. costs more than the (partial) refunding) for safety violations. There should be structures and procedures for that in place already and you avoid creating even more bureacraziness with all the problems that brings.
- skfingngihg 4y agoGood point. disincentivize Lax maintenance even more, airlines should want their planes to be in good condition
- TylerE 4y agoThat just incentivizes better lying, not better safety. These rules have been written in blood many times over.
- pixelfarmer 4y agoYou mean better lying than they already do by reclassifying everything as a "safety issue" to avoid paying out customers because they skipped on a lot of things already to increase "shareholder value" or other such garbage? I just hope they don't drain additional time & people to check into each of these "safety issues" now, thinning out the crowd who will also check into actual incidents ...
- remote_phone 4y agoWho is on the regulatory body that reviews these cases? Probably friends of the airline industry.
- chii 4y ago> flying a plane that is unsafe which is already illegal, and has consequences. The airline will probably lose reputation and business if the public catches wind of it. The exception for cancellation should not have been in place, except as a way for airlines to get out of the obligations but also allow law makers to be seen to be doing something. Basically theater.
- rendaw 4y agoIf they suddenly have way more safety issues, the logical next step would be to prevent them from operating an airline, right? All this says to me is that the government does nothing to prevent hugely unsafe airlines from operating. The cancellation loophole seems fine to me, it's the followthrough that's concerning. What am I missing here?
- concordDance 4y ago> If they suddenly have way more safety issues, the logical next step would be to prevent them from operating an airline, right? Thing is, you, as an external observer, can't tell. There are a zillion things that slightly increase risk. If a manager ignores a couple to avoid having a black mark due to costing the company money its very unlikely to bite him in any way that can be pinned on him. But the combination of a very large number of these little decisions will eventually result in a crash. And before you ask, no, saying "well you just tell everyone they must take no risks at all or its prison time" is not the answer as that will basically kill the airlines as a form of mass transit, leading to everyone taking the more dangerous car trips. There's always something more that can be done to reduce risk.
- makapuf 4y agoOr reduce passenger travelling, which in the current days of possible zoom meetings and climate disruption would be a net positive.
- sandworm101 4y agoThe safety issues have nothing to do with the planes. They are to do with lack of crew to fly the planes. The airlines are not maintaining a sufficient reserve of backup crews because doing so costs money. The is profiteering under the guises of "safety".
- HWR_14 4y agoThey want to avoid the following situation. X% of the time a plane crashes and costs $Y. It costs $Z to cancel/delay a flight due to penalties and compensation. $Z > X% of $Y, therefore fly the unsafe flight. So they lower $Y in the case that it's a safety issue to save lives.
- sorokod 4y agoWho are "they"and why would "they" want to do that? Asking because flying passengers on unsafe planes is already illegal.
- true_religion 4y agoThey are the Canadian government and they want to do that because keeping their citizens alive is part of their job.
- butlerm 4y agoNot as much of their job as it used to be unfortunately. But that is a topic for another day.
- fallingknife 4y agoPresumably someone who flies on planes, because they don't want the plane they're on to crash.
- RobotToaster 4y agoWouldn't the genuine answer to that be to increase the cost of a plane crashing by a lot?
- felipelemos 4y agoThe genuine answer is to held criminally liable the responsibles for allowing an unsafe flight to take off.
- xg15 4y ago
- russell_h 4y agoI don’t know anything about Canadian travel law, but I assume there is no question that the airline must deliver the service you paid for. It reads to me like this law was intended to provide additional compensation to passengers who are delayed. The EU has something similar.
- Sakos 4y agoWe accidentally dropped a screw in your pizza and had to cancel it as a safety issue. Sorry, no refunds. Brilliant!
- noisy_boy 4y agoI think the response to that would be (based on the assumption that this safety clause is being routinely thrown around), "why do you keep dropping screws in so many pizzas?"
- Sakos 4y agoBased on our non-biased investigation, our rate of screws in pizzas isn't any higher than that of our competitors. (subtext: Financial incentive) If you want less screws in pizzas, maybe you should petition your representatives in government [who we've paid off to ignore the issue] In fact, we'd support any legislative action to subsidize investment into improving the rates of screws in pizzas across the industry because we care about your well-being so much [as long as there's no oversight over how those funds are actually used, papa needs a new Ford F150]
- vinaypai 4y agoThis isn't about refunds for the fare paid. This is about the ADDITIONAL $1000 compensation that airlines owe for last minute cancellation.
- SECProto 4y agoThe above comment wasnt complete. The airline must still provide either a refund or alternate travel arrangements (regardless of if a delay is within their control or not). There is additional monetary compensation required if the flight is delayed by more than a certain number of hours (but only if it is within the airline's control) I've made about $1400 from delayed flights in the last 3 years