Staff! Air Canada ruined our trip to Ireland, but won’t take the blame.

Dear Tripped Up,

Last September my husband and I left our children with their grandparents and headed to Ireland. Our $2,132 itinerary took us from Minneapolis to Toronto to Dublin with tickets booked on United Airlines through Expedia, but ultimately operated by Air Canada, a partner of United. We had boarded our connecting flight in Toronto (and I was already dozing in my seat) when the captain announced that an operator had crashed the jet bridge into the starboard engine. We were given hotel vouchers and told we would be rebooked for the next day. Check-out time came and went without a word, so we went to the airport and were told to call Air Canada customer service. An agent booked a flight for that evening and we printed out boarding passes at a kiosk at the airport. But when we tried to board, we were told that the boarding passes were invalid. Ultimately, we were offered two options for the next day: fly to Dublin via Newark, or return to Minneapolis. We cut our losses and headed home after spending a night in Toronto at a hotel. But United only refunded us $1,087, barely half of what we paid. Air Canada reimbursed us for the second hotel and other costs, but we believe that the airlines owe us not only a full refund, but also 400 Canadians each ($295 each) under Canadian law for denied boarding. Both refused. Can you help? Michelle, Edina, Minnesota.

Dear Michelle,

I found the 58-page dossier that you included with your story quite convincing. (It also convinced me that you or your husband is a lawyer, which turns out to be true.)

I skipped Expedia, since your trip had already started, and contacted United and Air Canada. Because you flew with an airline partner, it is a codeshare arrangement. A United spokeswoman, Erin Jankowski, quickly sent me a statement noting that the refund you received from United was as instructed by Air Canada and referred all other questions to her.

In contrast, it took almost two weeks for Air Canada to contact me, and the response was disappointing.

“Our records indicate that these customers were not denied entry to Toronto,” wrote Peter Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for the airline. “Instead, it appears that after the cancellation of their original flight to Ireland, they opted to return to Minneapolis from Toronto rather than head to Dublin after the delay. Once that was determined, we rebooked the customers on a flight back to Minneapolis.”

No compensation, no word on the $1,045 still missing from your refund and no explanation as to how you were turned away at the gate for your second flight and yet “were not denied boarding.”

Air Canada has offered you and your husband a credit of C$1,200 toward a future flight, Mr. Fitzpatrick wrote to me, “to take into account the impact on their travel plans and experiences.”

There was no answer to my direct question as to why your boarding passes didn’t work the second night. In fact, Mr. Fitzpatrick’s initial statement does not even indicate that Air Canada believed you were even attempting to board, despite the boarding passes you included in the file sent to me and the two airlines.

I wrote back with more pointed questions, thanks to what I learned after reading about the Canadian Transportation Agency regulations for the protection of air passengers and spoke with Tom Oommen, the Director General of the CTA’s Analysis and Outreach Branch.

“We have what I would call a very complete holistic system of consumer protection for airlines,” he said. For example, if flight disruptions occur for reasons within an airline’s control and the airline is unable to get passengers onto another flight within nine hours, it must book the passenger on any airline, including competitors with which it has no agreements . the United States does not impose this.

Mr Oommen also notes that if a passenger gets stuck mid-journey and is not satisfied with the options for continuing on, the airline should offer to “rebook that passenger on a flight back to the place of origin free of charge and refund his money.” whole ticket.”

He wouldn’t comment specifically on your case, but that’s exactly what happened to you. (The only exception to these rules is when the disruption is not within the airline’s control, Mr. Oommen said, but when a mechanical problem is caused by an airline employee or contractor, “it’s difficult to make that argument .”)

There are also many circumstances in which Canada requires airlines to compensate passengers – between $400 and $2,400 – for flight delays, cancellations and denied boarding that are within the airline’s control. There is an exception for when such issues have safety implications, which might apply to the first night’s engine damage, but not, it seems to me, to the second night’s non-functioning boarding passes. That sounds a lot like being denied boarding.

This time you heard back before I did, and forwarded me several emails from Air Canada, including one stating that the airline had approved a cash payment of $400 per traveler. Then Mr. Fitzpatrick emailed me to say you would receive a full refund.

So you got what you asked for, but of course you would have preferred to go to Ireland. And what exactly happened when Air Canada refused to board you in Toronto? Mr. Fitzpatrick told me that United canceled your ticket before you even got to the gate.

I found that confusing: the boarding pass has an Air Canada ticket number, and you hadn’t even spoken to United that day. So I contacted Ms. Jankowski at United again, who investigated the situation further and discovered that “United canceled the tickets after sending messages to the operating airline, Air Canada, informing them that the tickets had not been properly had been reissued for the rescheduled flight. flight.”

Apparently somewhere in the interface of the two airlines’ systems, your Air Canada boarding pass was invalidated by United, and neither airline contacted you. And that’s a shame, because Mr Fitzpatrick later confirmed that the second flight left with empty seats.

When you decided to just go home, the Air Canada representative at the airport told you to call United. The process to untangle the mess and get you booked on a flight back to Minneapolis took hours and six different United customer service representatives and supervisors.

Your experience is a good reason for all of us to avoid codeshares unless they are necessary, for example when an itinerary includes flights operated by different airlines.

All this because you originally booked Air Canada flights as United Code Shares – a choice you found on Expedia. When I recently ran a weeklong search from Minneapolis to Dublin on Expedia in April, the first two choices that appeared were the same route via Toronto with no price difference, one booked directly with Air Canada and the other as a codeshare on United. Assuming you saw the same thing last year, I’m willing to bet that if you had booked Air Canada you would have reached Ireland, albeit a day late. All the more reason to book directly with one airline.

There’s one final mystery: why wouldn’t Air Canada admit that this was a denied boarding case and follow the required CTA rules? Yes, your case doesn’t fit exactly the agency’s official definitionthat was written to describe overbooking or changes to aircraft, but if an airline accidentally cancels a passenger’s ticket after they have already printed a boarding pass and you are stopped at the gate, what is that?

I presented this as a theoretical situation to Mr. Oommen of the CTA

“The classic denied boarding is what you’re describing,” he said.

That means you can claim another $400 each for this second incident, and spend it on a new flight to Ireland, for example with Aer Lingus, direct or via Chicago.

If you need advice on a well-designed itinerary gone wrong, send an email to TrippedUp@nytimes.com.