US air travelers aren’t the only ones frustrated by recent delays. But at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport, no one is even keeping track of complaints.
“Travelers passing through Toronto’s Pearson International Airport have reported a spate of frustrating delays in the days leading up to March Break, the airport’s busiest time of the year, but it appears no one is keeping track of the complaints,” says CBC News.
Passengers from across the country with unresolved complaints used to be able to lodge them with the Air Travel Complaints Commissioner, a position created in 2000 to document problems.
But that job is sitting vacant. The last complaint report covered incidents in 2004.
“We think it’s unfortunate that the position has been allowed to lapse,” said David Jeanes, president of the advocacy group Transport 2000. “It’s still necessary for passengers to understand what their choices are when they travel.”
To make matters worse, the country’s largest air carrier, Air Canada, no longer has an ombudsman’s office to oversee customer complaints, after deciding it was not necessary.
Earlier this week, travelers complained after the airport’s computer system failed, forcing the staff to manually check in customers for some time.
The Greater Toronto Airports Authority is investigating the computer glitch.
In the US, meanwhile, “airline delays worsened in January as congestion and poor weather strained the nation’s air travel system,” wrote Bloomberg News.
Carriers’ on-time arrival rate was 73.1%, down from 78.8% in January 2006, the Transportation Department said. Only 2005 had a lower January rate, at 71.4%, since the US began keeping track of the data in 1999.
Other bad news: baggage complaints rose to 8.19 for every 1,000 passengers, an 18% increase from a year earlier.
Report by David Wilkening
