Airlines See Order On Seating

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The Canadian Transportation Agency is ordering airlines to formally adopt family-friendly seating policies. The order, effective March 2, says carriers must take steps to seat parents and children together.

“We put consumers first and this is quite a reasonable request,” said David McCaig, president and chief operating officer of the Association of Canadian Travel Agencies. “In a lot of cases an airline worker would pick up on this; obviously we say you can’t have children sit by themselves.”

The order followed a complaint from a British Columbia father who noted he could only guarantee his family was seated together by advance booking. Kevin Krygier was told he must pay $80 for reserved seating for himself, his wife, and two children aged 5 and 7 on a routine 2012 flight from Vancouver to Calgary.

Krygier filed a complaint against Air Canada, WestJet, Porter Airlines and other carriers, describing the requirement to pay for reserved seating for families as “unreasonable”: “Mr. Krygier submits that children are unable to care for themselves, to understand the rules and regulations of air travel, to understand the requisite safety instructions being provided to them, and to act independently in an aircraft emergency.”

Ruling in the Krygier case, regulators said Canadian airlines must file plans within eight weeks to show they have “adopted supplemental seating policies or procedures and are making reasonable efforts to ensure that children are seated with their accompanying guardian.”  The agency did not address airlines’ charging of fees for reserved seating in general.

Air Canada and others wrote in submissions to regulators that check-in staff already attempt to “do everything possible” to seat families together – but admitted “it is not always possible”: “If a child remains seated separately from their parent or legal guardian once on board the aircraft, flight attendants will use their best efforts in reseating children under 12.”

Canada has no statutory passenger rights code. “What is the point of your paying for advanced seating if there is no guarantee that you are going to get a seat?” said Heather Craig-Peddie, vice president of the travel agencies’ association. “They know the age of passengers and they should be able to travel together.”

The Transportation Agency in a confidential 2013 Assessment Of Air Passenger Level Of Service Indicators concluded Canada has one of the weakest passenger rights regimes of any industrialized country. Under the Transportation Act regulators may only investigate actual complaints from the public. The agency received 882 complaints from air passengers in 2013, the same year Canadian airlines carried some 40 million passengers.