Air Canada is a large carrier under Canada’s Air Passenger Protection Regulations, so a disruption within its control that lands you three, six or nine hours late is worth CAD 400, CAD 700 or CAD 1,000. Being bumped pays more. Its own conditions of carriage publish those figures, which removes the first argument before you start.
How the airline takes the claim
Air Canada takes disruption claims through its flight delays, cancellations and disruptions page, which invites you to “file a claim for disrupted travel and/or expenses” and hands off to its self-serve eligibility tool. Its Customer Service Plan commits it to “respond to each passenger compensation claim made under Canada’s Air Passenger Protection Regulations within 30 days of receiving it”, and to provide APPR refunds within 30 days. Treat the first as the statutory clock in s.19(4) rather than a courtesy: it is the same 30 days either way.
The amounts Air Canada itself publishes
Its conditions of carriage page states the delay figures — CAD 400 for an arrival delay of 3 to 6 hours, CAD 700 for 6 to 9, CAD 1,000 for 9 hours and more — and the denied boarding figures set by s.20 of the Regulations: CAD 900 for under 6 hours, CAD 1,800 for 6 to 9, CAD 2,400 for 9 hours and more. Denied boarding must be paid within 48 hours of the refusal, not within 30 days. The full table and the control test are in the APPR amounts page.
Air Canada clears the size test in s.1(2) — two million passengers worldwide in each of the two preceding calendar years — with room to spare: its 2025 results report 45.3 million revenue passengers carried in 2025 and 45.9 million in 2024. If an agent quotes you the small-carrier figures, that is the paragraph to cite.
Air Canada Express does not shrink your claim
Air Canada’s own Customer Service Plan says its commitments cover “flights operated by Air Canada, Air Canada Rouge and Air Canada Express”, and that “Air Canada Express refers to flights operated by Jazz Aviation LP”; its corporate profile adds PAL Airlines under a commercial agreement. A regional operator carries far fewer than two million passengers a year, which invites the argument that your Dash 8 flight is a small-carrier claim worth CAD 125.
It is not. Section 1(4) provides that “a small carrier has the same obligations as a large carrier towards a passenger that it carries on behalf of a large carrier”, and s.2(2) makes carriers operating under a commercial agreement “jointly and severally, or solidarily, liable”. Section 2(1) puts the primary obligation on the carrier operating the flight, so you can address the claim to Air Canada and say so. See which airline actually owes you for the same problem in EU law.
Which regime applies to your Air Canada flight
| Your flight | Regime |
|---|---|
| Within Canada, or between Canada and anywhere else | APPR — Canadian dollars, Canadian Transportation Agency |
| Departs an EU or UK airport | APPR and EU261 or UK261 — euro or sterling amounts as well |
Air Canada is not a Community carrier, so Article 3(1)(b) of Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 does not reach its flights into Europe: an Air Canada flight from Frankfurt to Toronto is covered by EU261, and the same aircraft going the other way is not. Section 3(3) of the APPR says you must not be refused APPR compensation because you are also eligible under another regime, so the westbound flight is an APPR claim and the eastbound one is a choice. The euro amounts are in the EU261 and UK261 amounts table.
The 48-hour rule is easy to miss. For a delay or cancellation, Air Canada has 30 days to pay or explain. For denied boarding, s.20 requires payment “as soon as it is operationally feasible, but not later than 48 hours after the time of the denial of boarding”. If you were bumped and nothing arrived in two days, the airline is already late.
What if Air Canada refuses?
Canada has no ADR scheme for airlines; the Canadian Transportation Agency is the whole route. Its process page says you must have written to the airline and waited 30 days before filing. After that a Complaint Resolution Officer reviews eligibility, the airline gets 14 days to answer and you get 4 days to reply, and the officer decides within 90 days of the start notice. Send the APPR claim letter first and keep the case number.
Does Air Canada have to pay cash rather than a voucher?
The APPR does not set a payment method for s.19 compensation the way EU261 does, so this is where a travel-credit offer usually turns up. On the EU side the answer is flat: Article 7(3) of Regulation 261/2004 pays in cash, by electronic bank transfer, bank order or cheque, and in vouchers only “with the signed agreement of the passenger”. On the Canadian side, ask for the money and decline in writing — an unaccepted credit offer does not discharge the claim, and the CTA file reads better with a plain refusal in it.
Rules in force today
This is the law that applies to a flight you take today. A revision of Regulation 261/2004 was adopted in July 2026 — the Parliament approved the conciliation text on 7 July 2026 and the Council gave final approval on 13 July 2026 — and it is not yet in force: it applies 12 months after it enters into force following publication in the Official Journal, and the final text sets the details. See what the 2026 EU261 reform changes. Canada’s own reform is pending too, with no published coming-into-force date.