Air Canada owes Oakville family $70,000 for passenger rights violation

Air Canada has been ordered to pay an Oakville woman and her family nearly $70,000 after a consumer complaint body in India found the airline violated the passengers’ rights when they kicked them off a flight last September.

Minali Mittal was travelling with her three-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter from Chandigarh, India, to Toronto with a stopover in Delhi on September 3, 2017.

In documents filed by the State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, Mittal says her daughter was waiting to use the restroom before takeoff, which appeared to be locked for maintenance.

She said young girl threw up in the aisle after becoming nauseated due to a “foul smell” escaping the lavatory. That’s when Mittal claims Air Canada staff began berating and humiliating her daughter, then forced the three passengers off the plane.

Mittal says she and her children were left waiting at the gate for hours in the middle of night, with their luggage sent to Toronto without them, and staff still holding their passports.

Mittal, who holds a Canadian passport, says they were eventually put on a flight home three days later, but not before she bought her own tickets back to Chandigarh so they could stay with family, since accommodation was never offered by the airline.

In a scathing 71-page judgement, Judge Paramjeet Singh Dhaliwal found the airline’s actions amounted to “grave deficiency in service, unfair trade practice and violation of human rights and child rights, due to which the complainants suffered great mental tension, agony, harassment, humiliation and hardships.”

Air Canada claims the family was deboarded from the 14-hour flight because the young passenger was ill.

“Carrying a sick passenger would have been risky for the child, in case the mid-air crisis takes place,” their defence reads. “Moreover, it would have caused inconvenience to other passengers as well, due to emergency landing and unwanted delays.”

The judge refuted that claim, noting the young passenger was never questioned about how she was feeling or what had caused her to vomit and was never offered any medical assistance.

In a statement to CityNews, a spokesperson for Air Canada said the airline plans to contest the ruling.