Decision No. 21-C-A-2023

[1] The applicants purchased tickets through Expedia for travel from Cancun, Mexico, to Toronto, Ontario, departing on May 9, 2020, with the respondent.

[2] The applicants state, “Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, [they] could not leave the country and [their] flight was cancelled.” The respondent issued a travel voucher for their unused tickets. The applicants seek a refund of their tickets.

[3] In this decision, the role of the Canadian Transportation Agency (Agency) is to decide whether the respondent properly applied the terms and conditions that were applicable to the tickets that the applicants purchased, as set out in its Tariff.

[4] If the Agency finds that the respondent has failed to properly apply its Tariff, it may direct the respondent to take the corrective measures that it considers appropriate, or to pay compensation for any expense incurred by a person adversely affected by the respondent’s failure.

[5] The onus is on the applicants to establish, on a balance of probabilities, that the respondent has failed to properly apply the terms and conditions applicable to their tickets.

[6] Under the Tariff, a passenger is entitled to a refund when they voluntarily cancel their reservation only if they purchased a refundable Priority-class ticket. For all other classes of service, if a ticket is voluntarily cancelled, the respondent will issue a credit in the form of an e-wallet. If the cancellation is initiated by the respondent for reasons within its control, the Tariff provides that, at the passenger’s option, the respondent will either issue a credit in the form of an e-wallet or a refund to the original form of payment used to purchase the ticket.

[7] In this case, the applicants do not claim that the flight was cancelled by the respondent. Rather, the applicants simply state that they could not leave the country due to the COVID-19 pandemic; and while they provided a copy of an email from Expedia indicating that their booking had been cancelled, it does not establish that the cancellation was initiated by the respondent. In addition, the evidence demonstrates that the applicants purchased non-refundable fare tickets that are only eligible for a credit in the form of an e-wallet in case of a voluntary cancellation.

[8] In light of the above, the Agency finds that the applicants have not met their burden of demonstrating that the respondent failed to properly apply its Tariff when it provided them with a travel voucher instead of a refund to their original form of payment.

[9] The Agency, therefore, dismisses the application.