I recently had a pretty wild travel day, starting off with a cancelled flight and culminating in taking 3 flights to get home. I managed to successfully navigate the airline bureaucracy to get myself home at the same time that I was scheduled, but afterwards I started wondering if I had actually screwed up and cost myself $1,000. As is the case with most things, it’s….complicated – let me explain.
A Crazy Day From Nova Scotia On Air Canada
In July 2026, my wife and I spent a few days in the Atlantic Maritime provinces of Canada. We had flown from our home in Cincinnati into Halifax, Nova Scotia and spent a few days in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island. We returned back on Halifax on Saturday night, with a 7:00 a.m. flight to Toronto and then flying from Toronto (YYZ) to Cincinnati, arriving back home around 1:30 p.m.
A 7:00 a.m. flight always SOUNDS like a good idea, until I have to set my alarm the night before. In this case, we were staying at an airport hotel and had a rental car, so we set our alarms for 4:45 a.m. I figured that would give us plenty of time to wake up, grab a quick bite from our hotel (they offered grab and go breakfast) and make it in plenty of time. With Halifax (YHZ) being a fairly small airport, I figured there wouldn’t be any issue, even without having TSA Precheck (since we were in Canada).
But when I woke up and checked my email, I found an email from Air Canada
They ended up rebooking us on a flight at 5:15 a.m., which we missed because it was only 25 minutes after I read the email. This led to a crazy day where we got rebooked through Montreal arriving at 9 p.m. (instead of 1:30 p.m.), but then managed to talk our way onto an earlier flight from Halifax to Montreal, then one from Montreal to Toronto, in time to hit up the Plaza Premium YYZ F Gates lounge and still make our ORIGINAL flight from Toronto to Cincinnati.
We ended up with nearly 20 boarding passes for the day 😀
The Canadian Air Passenger Protection Regulations (APPR)
As I was talking to my wife about the trip, she commented that if she had been traveling alone, she would have just taken what the airline gave her. Meaning that when she missed the 5:15 rebooked flight, she would have gone to the airport, and when the agent said the best she could do was traveling through Montreal arriving home at 9 p.m., she would have just taken those flights.
While I have to say it was a bit “fun” to try and “work the system”, it was also a bit stressful. But then I remembered that Canada also has a law about flight delays. Canada is not part of EU261 (due to ummm it not being in the European Union), but they do have a similar kind of law called the Canadian Air Passenger Protection Regulations (APPR)
Did I Just Screw Up And Cost Myself $1,000?
According to Canada’s APPR, for a large airline (like Air Canada), for a delay of 6 to 9 hours, the compensation is CAD$700. At current exchange rates, for the 2 of us that would have been USD$992.06
Now, I don’t think it’s quite that simple, since airlines are notorious for trying to wiggle out of these things. And I don’t know how us “missing” our 5:15 a.m. flight might have played into this. So while I don’t think it would have been an open and shut case, I’m also personally pretty good about being annoyingly persistent about these sorts of things 😀
(SEE ALSO: (Still) Fighting for EU261 / 2004 compensation)
(SEE ALSO: Why Aer Lingus is paying me $1306)
On the other hand, a few years ago Air Canada proactively gave me outrageously good compensation for a broken seat when all I really wanted was 5,000 Aeroplan miles. So I would say I had better than even odds of collecting the APPR compensation, but who knows.
The Bottom Line
So did I “screw up”? Hard to say. We had been gone from our kids for 5 days at this point, and 2 of our kids were headed out to camp the very next morning. So it was definitely nice to get home Sunday afternoon to be able to see them and help them pack, etc. Rather than get home at 10 p.m. and still have to do all those things. But was that $1,000 nice? I’m not so sure 😀
What would you have done? Taken the shot at $1,000? Or just gotten yourself home as soon as possible?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at
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