Experts raise concerns around air travel complaints overhaul

Experts are raising concerns about a proposed overhaul to the country’s air passenger complaints process, as worries about impartiality and efficiency resurface.

At Senate transport committee hearings this week, law and aviation professors said the would-be reforms could give airlines an edge over customers while failing to address the root causes of a massive complaints backlog.

In April, the Liberals announced plans to establish a model where independent adjudicators resolve complaints over issues ranging from flight refunds to accessibility.

The change would mark an end to the current in-house process under the Canadian Transportation Agency, where the backlog sits at a record 98,000 complaints and wait times often exceed two years.

University of Ottawa law professor Paul Daly said delegating decision-making authority to private parties selected by airlines should be “viewed with suspicion” and accompanied by oversight rules to ensure impartiality.

“This is the exception, not the norm,” he said of private adjudication. Where it does exist in Canada or Europe, the outsourced role is couched in a “procedural superstructure that ensures transparency” and fairness.

“Bill C-31 has none of that,” he told the senators, referring to the omnibus bill in which the changes are bundled up.

The legislation also stressed that a decision by a private adjudicator, who would be chosen from a list authorized by the transport minister, would be “binding.”

In the European Union and United Kingdom, passengers who file a complaint via an alternative dispute resolution body can opt to reject the decision, meaning the outcome is not binding on the consumer.

Precedents for the proposed complaints system exist in Canada, but some serve more as cautionary tales than examples to emulate. In the banking sector, the government streamlined adjudication into a single ombudsman in 2024 to help reduce delays and complexities.

“A proliferation of private complaint-handling bodies did not benefit consumers,” said Sara Eve Levac, a Quebec-based lawyer with advocacy group Option consommateurs, who called for strict regulation if the change does go through.

Confusion and uneven rulings could be another side effect of opening up adjudication to various companies.

“With multiple actors potentially involved in the complaints resolutions, two passengers with the same facts could get different answers. That could hurt the passengers who cannot predict the outcome, and that would also hurt the airlines who cannot plan their compliance,” said Vincent Correia, a law professor at McGill University specializing in aviation.

Other experts said the reforms — among them a 90-day time frame for complaint resolution and payment within 30 days of an order — mark a step forward for speed and transparency, but that bottlenecks could persist in the courts.

Jeff Morrison, CEO of the National Airlines Council of Canada, has welcomed the new complaints process, calling the current one “ineffective.”

However, he told senators Tuesday that he hopes the system will steer clear of the “claims farms” that clog up European systems and that the government rather than carriers should fund the adjudication process to avoid appearing “biased in favour of the airlines.”

Some advocates have said a broader solution lies in reforming the current system to close loopholes for airlines and simplify the process for travellers — both stated goals of the changes pledged by the government in its spring economic update last April.

In June 2023, the federal government passed legislation that aimed to make good on the Liberals’ vow to tighten passenger rights rules after a year marked by travel chaos and a ballooning complaints backlog.

The overhaul included provisions to compensate passengers under a wider range of flight disruption scenarios and make airlines pay a per-complaint fee — regardless of the outcome — to discourage violations.

However, progress on the new regime stalled, with no regulatory changes finalized. Transport Canada officials confirmed this week that the sweeping reforms laid out more than three years ago are no longer in play, replaced by amendments to the complaints resolution process currently in committee.

Air Canada beat Ottawa to the punch last April when it launched an alternative process to resolve compensation claims in a pilot project that taps an external arbitrator.

Funded by the airline, the parallel arbitration track will be run by a subsidiary of U.K.-based CDRL Group, a non-profit that resolves dispute claims in areas ranging from retail to utilities.

Met with skepticism by consumer rights advocates, the move nonetheless hints at mounting frustration with the existing framework, where cases drag on despite a staffing boost — more than 100 “complaint resolution officers” — over the past few years.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 24, 2026.

Christopher Reynolds, The Canadian Press