Almost half of all flight delays in 2022 were airlines' responsibility, government data suggests

Nearly half of all flight delays in 2022 were deemed the responsibility of an airline, according to new numbers from Transport Canada.

Out of nearly 199,000 delays that occurred last year, just over 87,500 — or 44 per cent — were considered to be within an airline's control and were not due to a safety issue.

Passengers still remember the chaotic travel season caused by widespread flight delays and cancellations in the summer and December of 2022. The Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA) issued hundreds of fines to Canada's major airlines as a result.

Rules that came into force in 2019 — often referred to as the air passenger bill of rights —  require airlines to compensate passengers for delays or cancellations that are within their control.

But as travel began to return to pre-pandemic levels last summer, passengers began accusing airlines of skirting those rules and denying them the compensation they're owed.

As a result, the CTA — which is responsible for adjudicating complaints between airlines and passengers — has been grappling with a backlog of passenger complaints which now numbers 57,000.

This past spring, the government proposed changes to the air passenger bill of rights. The changes are currently being reviewed by the CTA and aren't expected to come into effect until 2024.

The government is looking to close a loophole in the current rules that airlines have used to deny customers compensation for flight disruptions required for safety purposes.

The proposed changes would require airlines to automatically compensate passengers unless the airline can prove that  "exceptional circumstances" caused a flight disruption.

The CTA is proposing that those circumstances include weather concerns, airport operational issues and "hidden manufacturing defects" on an airplane. Technical problems that are part of "normal airline operations" would not be considered part of those exceptional circumstances.

Airlines and other industry players are arguing the changes could put passenger safety at risk.

"We want our pilots to be entirely free from any financial consideration when they take a safety-related decision," WestJet CEO Alexis von Hoensbroech told the Canadian Press in September.

"Regulation should never be punitive for safety decisions."

WestJet's head of external affairs Andy Gibbons told CBC News that Transport Canada's numbers prove that airlines don't use safety as a loophole to deny passengers compensation.