North America

Following a complaint from two Alitalia passengers whose flights were canceled, the Department’s Aviation Enforcement Office investigated the carrier’s refusal to pay cash compensation to the passengers. The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) now fined  Alitalia USD 125,000 for providing inaccurate information on its website regarding its policy on compensation to passengers on delayed and cancelled flights. 

Following the crash of a King Air 100 in which he was injured as a passenger, James Ratt brought a claim against a number of parties including the Candadian Minister of Transport and the Government on the grounds that their implementation of the safety management systems within the regime created by the Canadian Aviation Regulations created a lax regulatory environment that contributed to the circumstances of the crash. However, the court concluded that neither party owed the passenger a duty of care.

In December 2011, the Government of Canada announced that the Canadian Transportation Agency would develop regulations requiring all-inclusive air price advertising. These regulations are now published on Part II of the Canada Gazette.

The regulations support two key objectives:

Three airlines have challenged the Transportation Department’s new price-advertising rule nefore the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming that the DOT is violating the First Amendment by prohibiting airlines from advertising base prices net of taxes and fees. The airlines also claim that the DOT has been violating the Airline Deregulation Act by imposing unique requirements such as “the size of typeface and the length of mandatory refunds — in an industry that Congress expressly chose to deregulate.”