Air Canada had no idea these passengers were on its flights and cancelled their tickets home

Siok Har Lim was nervous about her trip to Europe last November. The Montreal woman wasn’t an experienced traveller, had never visited the countries on her itinerary, and barely spoke any English.

Lim’s multi-leg journey through Germany and Hungary was going smoothly until she arrived at the Budapest airport to fly home and learned Air Canada had cancelled her return flight.

“I was very scared and I did not know what to do,” Lim told Go Public in Cantonese, which her niece translated.

After much confusion, an Air Canada agent explained that Lim’s ticket was cancelled because she had apparently not gotten on an earlier flight from Munich to Berlin and was deemed a “no-show.”

“I don’t understand why Air Canada is saying what they’re saying,” Lim recalled. “Because I actually did board that flight.”

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Not wanting to be stranded in a foreign country on her own — with no ability to communicate with anyone, and only one hour before her flight was set to depart — Lim was forced to purchase a new ticket home, for $2,550.

“She is a senior citizen on a limited income,” said her niece, Ai Li Lim. “Obviously that cost was really stressful for her.”

Go Public has learned of five other people that Air Canada also incorrectly deemed “no-shows” on three other trips, cancelling their return tickets and refusing to accept evidence such as boarding passes — even selfies taken on the planes — they hadn’t missed an earlier flight. 

The cases are cause for concern, since airlines need to know exactly how many people are on the plane and who they are, says an expert on methods of boarding passengers onto planes.

“If it is a systemic problem, like their computer systems not talking to each other, they should get it fixed,” said John Milne, an associate professor of engineering and management at Clarkson University in Potsdam, N.Y.

“In the meantime, how can you … cancel people’s return flights when you know your records aren’t reliable?”

That information is even more critical in extreme situations, such as last month’s American Airlines crash in Washington, said Milne.

“What if a plane goes down and the airline isn’t actually aware of everyone on board?” he said. 

A spokesperson for Air Canada said that in each case, the customer’s flight “was not properly recorded” due to “a human error or technological malfunction.”

He insisted there was no safety issue because passengers went through airport security and had to validate their identification at the gate prior to boarding. 

He did not address the implications of not knowing how many people are on a flight in the case of an emergency. He also did not address why Air Canada continued to insist the passengers were not on earlier flights, ignoring evidence to the contrary.

Air Canada offers $100 coupon

When Lim returned to Montreal, she tried to get compensation from Air Canada. The airline said she should seek payment from Swiss Air — the operating airline for the Air Canada flight from Budapest — and offered her a $100 coupon as a “goodwill gesture.”

So she turned to the travel agent who booked the trip to help. 

Despite the agent forwarding the boarding pass from Lim’s Munich-to-Berlin flight and offering to provide additional proof such as taxi receipts from the Berlin airport to a hotel, the Berlin hotel bill and photos of Lim posing at Berlin landmarks — Air Canada would not reimburse for the ticket. 

“She felt a little bit gaslit, if I can call it that,” said Lim’s niece, Ai-Li Lim. “Because she obviously took the flight.”

Air Canada also incorrectly deemed Garth Jackson a “no-show” on a flight from Toronto to Tampa, Fla., last September and cancelled his return flight.

Even a selfie taken on board the plane he supposedly didn’t board wasn’t enough to convince Air Canada it’d made a mistake. He was forced to buy a new ticket to get home.

The airline finally conceded that a “boarding error” had occurred, reimbursed the cost of the new ticket and offered a $500 coupon, which he declined because it didn’t cover other incurred costs.

Like ‘a Franz Kafka novel’

Likewise, Dejan Ratkov offered proof — boarding passes, luggage tags and a selfie of his family on board the plane they supposedly missed in March 2022. But the airline insisted they weren’t on the flight. 

“To disappear as a human … It feels like I’m in a Franz Kafka novel,” said Ratkov, referring to the Czech novelist whose protagonists face surreal predicaments. 

Ratkov was forced to pay $2,000, the cheapest tickets he could find, to get his family back to Toronto from their ski trip in Banff, Alta. 

Passenger goes to court

Christopher Bailey of Vancouver was so exasperated by his alleged “no show” in October 2023, which cost him $1,070, he took Air Canada to small claims court.

“It was absolutely ludicrous,” said Bailey. “I kept thinking, this can’t be true. This is not happening because it makes absolutely no sense, what they’re saying.”

Only after serving notice of the lawsuit did Air Canada offer to reimburse him for the second ticket he had to purchase, but Bailey refused to settle as he was also suing for $8,500 in general damages for the stress.

In court, the judge chastised Air Canada, writing in a decision that Bailey had more evidence than most people would have had — including his boarding pass for the Montreal to St. John’s flight, and a receipt for beverages ordered on board — to prove he was not a “no-show.” 

“It is difficult to think of any other proof that a person could have provided,” wrote the judge  “And yet Air Canada continued to take the position, through its refusal of a refund, that [Bailey] had not been a passenger.”

An airline representative testified that an issue within the Air Canada system “failed to show the aircraft in question as having a seat 34A”, so the manifest had no record of Bailey on the plane..

The judge awarded Bailey his court fees and $2,000 in damages for his “inconvenience.” 

An Air Canada spokesperson said the company “is reaching out to these customers to apologize” and “rectify the situation.”

The spokesperson told Go Public such incidents are “extremely rare,” but that Air Canada is “working to mitigate such events” and “enhance our customer handling” should they occur again.

A spokesperson for Transport Canada said the regulatory body takes seriously any incident that could affect “safety and security” and that it will investigate if there has been “non-compliance.”  

He declined to comment on these specific incidents.

Meantime, Siok Har Lim says she is still waiting to be fully reimbursed for the ticket she shouldn’t have had to purchase to get home.

She says the experience has made her hesitant to take another trip.

“I’m very afraid that something like that will happen again,” she said. “And I will be stranded in a foreign country, not able to return home.”