An arrival three or more hours late at your final destination is worth CAD 400, CAD 700 or CAD 1,000 from a large airline under Canada’s Air Passenger Protection Regulations, and CAD 125, CAD 250 or CAD 500 from a small one. The delay must have been within the carrier’s control and not required for safety. Nothing else changes the figure.
What the APPR pays for a delay or a cancellation
Section 19 of the Air Passenger Protection Regulations (SOR/2019-150) sets one sum per band of arrival delay, measured at your final destination:
| Arrival delay | Large carrier | Small carrier |
|---|---|---|
| 3 hours to under 6 hours | CAD 400 | CAD 125 |
| 6 hours to under 9 hours | CAD 700 | CAD 250 |
| 9 hours or more | CAD 1,000 | CAD 500 |
A large carrier is defined in s.1(2) as one that “has transported a worldwide total of two million passengers or more during each of the two preceding calendar years”. Everything else is a small carrier. Air Canada and WestJet are both in the large column, and both publish those three figures on their own sites.
There is one variation. If you give up on the trip and take the refund under s.17(2) instead of a rebooking, s.19(2) fixes the payment at CAD 400 from a large carrier or CAD 125 from a small one, whatever the delay would have been. The compensation is for inconvenience: it sits on top of the ticket refund, not instead of it.
Compensation is only owed when you were told 14 days or less before departure. Beyond that notice, s.12 asks nothing of the airline.
The category decides everything
Every APPR entitlement hangs on which of three boxes the disruption falls into. The airline picks the box; s.13 obliges it to tell you the reason.
| Category | Where it lives | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Within the carrier’s control | s.12 | Information, standards of treatment, rebooking or refund, and compensation |
| Within the carrier’s control but required for safety | s.11 | Information, standards of treatment, rebooking or refund — no compensation |
| Outside the carrier’s control | s.10 | Information, and rebooking or refund under s.18 — no treatment, no compensation |
Section 10(1) opens with “situations outside the carrier’s control, including but not limited to the following”, so its list is a floor, not a ceiling. Named on it: a labour disruption within the carrier or within an essential service provider such as an airport or an air navigation service provider; meteorological conditions or natural disasters that make safe operation impossible; war, illegal acts, security threats, air traffic control instructions, NOTAMs, airport problems, medical emergencies, collisions with wildlife, manufacturing defects identified by the manufacturer or a regulator, and orders from state officials or law enforcement.
Crew shortages and crew scheduling are not named in s.10 or in s.11. That is not the same as a rule saying they are within the airline’s control, because the list is open — but it does mean an airline putting a crew shortage in the third box is arguing beyond the text, and you can ask it to say so in writing.
Section 11(2) closes the obvious loophole in the safety box: a knock-on disruption caused by an earlier safety-related one stays in the same box only if the carrier “took all reasonable measures to mitigate the impact” of that earlier event.
Denied boarding pays more
When you are bumped from a flight and the cause is within the airline’s control, s.20 sets the minimum higher than for a delay: CAD 900 for an arrival delay of less than 6 hours, CAD 1,800 for 6 hours to under 9, and CAD 2,400 for 9 hours or more. The trigger is paragraph 12(4)(d). Payment is due “as soon as it is operationally feasible, but not later than 48 hours after the time of the denial of boarding” — a far shorter fuse than the 30 days that applies to a delay claim.
Food, a phone and a hotel
Section 14 owes you food and drink in reasonable quantities and free access to a means of communication once you have waited two hours past the original departure time, and a hotel room plus transport to it if the carrier expects you to wait overnight. Those duties apply in the first two categories, not the third.
Section 13 is the one people forget. The carrier must give you the reason for the delay, cancellation or denial of boarding, the compensation that may be available, the standards of treatment that apply, and your recourse — including how to reach the Canadian Transportation Agency. During a delay it owes a status update every 30 minutes.
Baggage
Section 23 makes the airline pay back any baggage fee plus the Montreal Convention limit of 1,519 SDR, and it applies that limit to purely domestic Canadian flights as well by asking what would have been payable had the Convention applied. The Montreal complaint clocks — 7 days for damage, 21 days for delay — are the ones that matter there; see Montreal Convention baggage claims.
One year to ask, 30 days to answer. Section 19(3) requires the request to reach the carrier “before the first anniversary of the day on which the flight delay or flight cancellation occurred”. Section 19(4) then gives the carrier 30 days to “provide the compensation or an explanation as to why compensation is not payable”. Both dates go in your file the day you land.
Does EU261 also apply to a Canada–Europe flight?
It can, and the APPR does not stop you. Section 3(3) states that “a passenger must not be refused compensation in accordance with these Regulations for an event on the grounds that they are also eligible for compensation for the same event under a different passenger rights regime”. On a Canadian carrier flying out of an EU airport, Article 3(1)(a) of Regulation 261/2004 brings EU261 in as well; eastbound into Europe on a Canadian carrier it does not, because Article 3(1)(b) needs a Community carrier. Compare the two in EU261 vs the Montreal Convention and pick one claim to lead with.
What if the airline says the delay was outside its control?
Ask for the reason in writing under s.13 and check it against the s.10 list. A strike by the airline’s own staff will not help you: the CTA’s labour disruptions page states that a labour disruption within an airline is “considered a situation outside an airline’s control” and that “no compensation for inconvenience is due” — though rebooking or a refund survives. If the reason does not fit, the next step is the Canadian Transportation Agency. Its portal says you must have written to the airline and waited 30 days first, and its process page describes a Complaint Resolution Officer deciding within 90 days of the start notice, with the airline given 14 days to answer.
Is the APPR about to change?
A reform is pending, and the rules on this page are the ones in force. The Budget Implementation Act, 2023 amended the Canada Transportation Act to require compensation for all disruptions unless a defined exception applies, and the CTA published proposed amendments in the Canada Gazette, Part I on 21 December 2024, with comments closing on 6 March 2025. The CTA has published no coming-into-force date for the final version, so do not plan around one.
Ready to send it? Use the APPR claim letter, or go straight to the carrier page for Air Canada or WestJet.