Cancelled flight and hotel costs

[Stairali]

Please can I seek further opinion on this.

In December I am due to fly Timmins (Canada) – Toronto – Kingstown (St Vincent) on one ticket with Air Canada.

AC have cancelled the first leg and moved me to a later flight, meaning I miss the second leg. There is no longer a 5am Timmins – Toronto flight (on any day) meaning I have no choice but to overnight in Toronto in order to make the morning St Vincent Flight. Of course, at my own expense.

Guidance below (Section 12) and the AC Policy suggests this is tough luck as they told me more than 12 hours before the flight was due to depart.

Has anyone experienced anything similar and is it indeed just tough luck?

https://otc-cta.gc.ca/eng/publication/flight-delays-and-cancellations-a-guide

[JDB]

Yes, Canada has better rules than the US, but both are way behind the extraordinarily generous protections we have in Europe, so here where your journey starts in Canada, on a Canadian carrier a cancellation months ahead affords you no compensation or requirement re accommodation etc. I doubt insurance will help either, but you should check your policy. AC may let you rebook via a different routing to reach your destination.

[Lady London]

I actually agree with you @JDB that some things given by EU261 are far too generous and I would hope the US DoT don’t copy EU261 in full – as they are currently reviewing options.

For instance I think duty of care expenses should mostly be covered either by the passenger or their insurance.

However for cancellations, delays and reschedulings, I believe airlines should pay serious compensation and their escape routes need to be more limited. Exceptional circumstances exceptions range should become very very limited and apply only to the flight itself that was delayed, rescheduled or cancelled. Or at most to 1 flight previous of the allocated aircraft to protect smaller airlines.

The daisychaining that seems to have been shared as a tactic between airlines possibly in some “how to combat and limit EU261 liabilities” workgroups, of using delays anywhere in the world up to 3 flights previous as an exception exempting airlines from compensation for cancellations/delays 3 flights later even in a completely different geography, has to stop.

If an airline in their normal business runs literally 00’s of aircraft scheduled to operate on any given day, then it’s laughable that they should be allowed to reach back 3 flights, perhaps even to an unrelated temporary local problem elsewhere on a pevious day(s), to claim exemption from compensation for their failure to provide resources to run flights they’ve sold to run today, with reasonable contingency. Obvs mass geographically widespread events like outbreak of war or ash cloud over all Europe should be allowed as exceptions but not events affecting 1 flight or a localised weather issue.