Air Canada is launching a pilot program to manage a Canadian Transportation Agency backlog of 95,000 complaints
The agency received $76 million in federal funding in 2023, but complaints have more than doubled since then
The Canadian Transportation Agency has a two-to-three-year backlog of customer complaints, and Air Canada will soon implement a pilot program to try and move them along.
Air Canada will ask 500 randomly selected passengers from a pile of those 95,000 complaints to participate in a voluntary adjudication process handled by Canada Aviation Dispute Resolution, a subsidiary of the resolution company CDRL, which is based in the UK.
According to CBC, Marc Barbeau, Air Canada’s executive vice-president and chief legal officer, explained that the airline would like to see if its portion of complaints could be resolved and closed within 90 days—an ambitious goal given that complaints typically sit in the CTA’s system for years.
“We think that 90-day timeframe is well within the realms of possibility,” Barbeau said, based on success he said European airlines have had with a similar process.
Barbeau said the hope is to resolve complaints in a manner that is “faster and efficient, but most importantly fair and equitable.”
The CTA’s complaints queue has more than doubled since 2023, the same year the agency received $76 million in federal funding to help reduce it. Complaints cover a range of travel issues including cancelled or delayed flights and lost baggage.
According to the CTA, Air Canada was issued an administrative monetary penalty of $426,000 last month for violating Air Passenger Protection Regulations (APPR) during the Air Canada strike last year.
“Between August 15 and 20, 2025, following flight cancellations for a reason outside the carrier’s control, Air Canada, a large carrier, committed multiple violations of the APPR when it failed to, at the passengers’ choice, provide a refund for any unused portion of the ticket, or provide the passenger, free of charge, with a confirmed reservation for the next available flight that is operated by any carrier, contrary to subsection 18(1.1) of the APPR,” said a notice on the CTA’s website.
Air Canada was given until mid-April to request a Transportation Appeal Tribunal of Canada review.
Related: An Air Canada employee tried to export drugs through an unsuspecting couple’s luggage
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
