[akhilnigs]

My compliant to US Dept of Transportation:

I booked three one-way air tickets with Air Canada for my family to travel from New Delhi to Los Angeles via Toronto on August 05th 2017, through a travel portal Cleartrip.com. I noticed an information on ticket stating that “Transit Visa for Canada may be required for traveling on this itinerary.”. On enquiry, portal helpdesk could not provide any information. Since layover at Toronto airport was just 1 hour and visa requirement appeared optional, we ignored this disclosure since my family had to just move into another flight with no wait time. Neither, we received any communication from Air Canada about Transit Visa requirement which was actually mandatory.
However, just couple of hours before flight departure from India, Air Canada officials called up my wife (who was travelling just with two young kids) to inform that they were doing “Trimming” and “since you don’t have Transit visa, we will not onboard you so advise to cancel the tickets immediately”. It was 5:30 PM (India Time), just before closing hours of India’s Air Canada office and official’s tone was highly aggressive and rude instead of empathetic.

Following this, I had to immediately cancel three tickets and make a fresh booking through another Airline on very next day. Though I requested airline to refund me whole ticket amount but I received only 58% amount after few weeks.

My concerns:
• Why Air Canada did not inform about mandatory Transit Visa requirement while booking the tickets?
• Although Air Canada had our contact details but why they chose NOT to inform us until last minute?
• I learnt from some blogs and some personal accounts that it’s not one-off case and many travellers are facing surprises, crisis and financial losses every day. few examples to mention:
o One of my colleague’s aged mother had to return from Toronto to U.K. and take another route to travel to US on her own expenses.
PLUS FEW OTHER LINKS
• In their defence, Air Canada officials expect travellers to be aware of all Visa requirements. But they do not acknowledge that this Transit Visa requirement is an exception (it’s required even if you land at Toronto). Neither, airline is taking any steps to keep travelers informed, despite so many cases happening every day.
• It can be inferred from these repeated instances that Air Canada is deliberately hiding this information to do overbooking to ensure 100% occupation and make holes in their victim’s pocket.
• If ticket is booked via some travel portal, Air Canada and portal officials start blaming each other without showing any sensitivity to traveller’s apathy. Why can’t they work together to keep passengers informed?
• Despite all Ombudsman, checks and balances how such unethical malpractices are functioning right under the nose of International Transport machinery?

My request:
• Official investigation of Ticket Booking processes at Air Canada and take appropriate Action to ensure that Air Canada keeps all passengers informed of mandatory Transit Visa requirements for at the time of booking ticket through any channel (i.e. Travel Portals, Direct Air Canada). US/Canada citizens would be exempted anyways.
• Since it takes couple of weeks to get Transit Visa, Air Canada should refrain from issuing ticket to passengers, if they would need Transit Visa and they don’t have sufficient time in hand to secure one, before travel date.
• Help me to get 100% refund of ticket amount.