Air Canada says the country’s passenger rights overhaul will hardly hurt its bottom line. On a call with analysts Monday, chief financial officer John Di Bert said the financial impact of the reforms will be “incremental.”
He says the full impact of the updated rights charter will become more apparent in 2024, noting there would be some added pressure.
In April, the federal government announced sweeping reforms to the Air Passenger Protection Regulations, with the specifics now being hashed out by Canada’s transport regulator.
The changes appear to scrap a loophole through which airlines have denied customers compensation for flight delays or cancellations when they were required for safety purposes.
The new rules also ratchet up the maximum penalty for airline violations to $250,000 _ a tenfold increase _ and put the regulatory cost of complaints on carriers. Air Canada reported surging profits in its latest quarter as consumers continued to spend on travel, despite higher inflation and interest rates weighing on their wallets. Air Canada reported surging profits in its latest quarter as consumers continued to spend on travel, despite higher inflation and interest rates weighing on their wallets.
The smaller fleet may have contributed to a relatively weak on-time performance, which saw Air Canada rank ninth out of 10 major North American airlines, according to aviation data firm Cirium. Some 68 per cent of the carrier’s 32,000-plus flights in September arrived on time, versus between 76 per cent and 86 per cent for the top seven airlines, including WestJet.
Rousseau pointed to Air Canada’s nearly 90 per cent load factor – a key metric measuring the proportion of available seats filled by passengers – as one reason for the delays.
“While this signals that we use our assets very effectively, one consequences is it puts extra pressure on the operations. That said, our on-time performance progressively improved throughout the quarter,” he told analysts on a conference call.
Source: Global News