No car rental reimbursement after WestJet cancels Canadian couple's flight
A Canadian couple whose flight was cancelled by WestJet decided to take matters into their own hands by renting a car and driving from Calgary home to Kamloops.
They took the airline to small claims court after the ordeal, claiming the car rental expense as well as a lump sum for the delay as per Air Passenger Protection Regulations (APPR).
But a BC Civil Resolution Tribunal member didn’t agree with the couple and capped their compensation at $400 each.
The couple was returning from Italy in August 2023 when WestJet cancelled their connecting flight from Calgary to Kamloops, citing crew availability. The couple was rebooked on another flight leaving 48 hours later.
The pair had work and a doctor’s appointment in Kamloops they couldn’t miss, so decided renting a car and getting home themselves was the best option.
The CRT member looked at APPR and found it didn’t provide reimbursement for self-booked travel when customers rejected an alternate flight provided by the airline.
The couple originally claimed $1,000 each for a delay of more than nine hours, but by rejecting the alternate flight, the CRT member found they were eligible for a refund of the original airfare instead.
“I acknowledge that both the alternate flights WestJet offered did not work for the applicants, but APPR section 17 does not guarantee an alternate route that matches the original arrival time. Rather, it explicitly contemplates delays of up to 48 hours,” the tribunal member wrote.
Ultimately, WestJet offered to refund the passengers $111.20 each, by calculating the distance from Calgary to Kamloops as 2.3% of the total trip mileage. Even though that’s much less.
” I acknowledge that applicants’ argument that this is not close to what WestJet charges for flights from Calgary to Kamloops, but the APPR does not specify how to calculate the unused portion of a ticket,” the CRT member wrote.
In the end, the two passengers received back much less than they were expecting.
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