A Montreal–Bogota flight cancelled in September 2022 has just produced a ruling worth knowing about. Air Canada told the passenger the cancellation was a safety issue — an exemption that would let it avoid paying compensation. When he pushed the case to the Canadian Transportation Agency, the airline submitted maintenance records showing an aircraft damaged by a catering truck. The problem: that wasn't his plane.
The passenger, Rojas, dug through public aviation incident records and worked out which aircraft had actually been assigned to his flight. It was in good working order. Air Canada had simply taken it and moved it to cover a different trip, then cancelled his. In January 2026 — nearly four years after the cancellation — the agency's complaint resolution officer found this was a commercial decision, not a safety one, and ordered compensation of C$1,000 (about US$712). He has now been paid.
The case matters because of how Canada's compensation rules work. Passengers can claim C$400, C$700 or C$1,000 for qualifying disruptions, depending on arrival delay. But airlines are off the hook when a disruption is within their control and required for safety — which creates an obvious incentive to label cancellations as maintenance issues. In this case, the working aircraft was reassigned to protect another route, and the regulator found the safety exemption doesn't stretch to cover the passengers whose plane got taken away.
It's not an isolated pattern. Another passenger cited in the same report was told his flight was cancelled for safety-related maintenance — while Air Canada allegedly wanted his aircraft for a schedule to Australia. And the principle isn't new: in a November 2022 decision, WestJet took the plane assigned to a Honolulu–Vancouver flight to rescue travellers from another flight with a fuel tank problem. The regulator agreed the swap was operationally sensible but still ordered C$1,000 per affected passenger. The legal test is whether the disruption flows directly from an earlier safety issue and whether the airline did everything reasonable to limit the damage — and Air Canada has also previously been accused of dressing up staffing shortages as safety matters.
Air Canada's position is that aircraft assignments are fluid, swaps exist to help the greatest number of passengers, and it doesn't move planes to dodge payouts. That may be true in a practical sense — sacrificing a flight with easy rebooking options to save a long-haul departure with none can be the right call operationally. But under Canadian law, the passengers who give up their seats still have a compensation claim, and a swapped working aircraft is not a broken one.
For travellers, the takeaway is straightforward: if you're told a cancellation was a safety issue and you smell a rat, ask questions and check records. Sites with public aviation incident and fleet-tracking data let passengers verify which aircraft was actually assigned to their flight — and that evidence can be decisive. The same game plays out elsewhere: in the US, maintenance explanations during delays often become weather explanations when compensation is requested, while in Europe ordinary technical faults generally don't excuse airlines from paying under EU261. Persistence pays — though this case also shows you may need patience measured in years.
Via View from the Wing.
