Air Canada chatbot invents a bereavement refund rule; tribunal holds airline liable
Air Canada's website chatbot told Jake Moffatt, who was booking flights after a grandparent's death, that a reduced bereavement fare could be claimed retroactively within 90 days of ticketing; the airline's actual policy did not allow retroactive claims. Air Canada refused the partial refund and argued it could not be held liable for information provided by its chatbot. In February 2024 British Columbia's Civil Resolution Tribunal rejected that defence and ordered the airline to pay C$812.02.
Moffatt booked full-fare flights on 11 and 16 November 2022 relying on the chatbot's answer, which linked to a separate bereavement page that contradicted it. An Air Canada representative later admitted the chatbot had provided 'misleading words' and said the airline would update it. The tribunal called the suggestion that the chatbot was a separate legal entity 'a remarkable submission' and found Air Canada did not take reasonable care to ensure the chatbot was accurate. Ars Technica reported that the chatbot appeared to have been disabled shortly after the ruling.
What would have stopped it
Ground customer-facing bots in the authoritative policy text and treat their answers as binding company statements.
Guardrails
- G1 Least privilege Not assessed Did the agent hold only the access the task needed?
- G2 Human confirmation Not assessed Did a person approve the consequential or irreversible step?
- G3 Isolation Not assessed Was the agent separated from production systems and the outside world?
- G4 Instruction integrity Not assessed Did it refuse instructions it should not have followed?
- G5 Truthfulness Failed Chatbot described a retroactive bereavement refund that the airline's policy did not offer.
- G6 Limits Not assessed Was there a cap on rate, spend, volume or scale?
- G7 Oversight Failed The error surfaced only through the customer's complaint months later.
- G8 Recovery Partial Airline first offered a $200 coupon; compensation came only via tribunal order.
Sources
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“After months of resisting, Air Canada was forced to give a partial refund to a grieving passenger who was misled by an airline chatbot inaccurately explaining the airline’s bereavement travel policy.”
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“Canada’s largest airline has been ordered to pay compensation after its chatbot gave a customer inaccurate information, misleading him into buying a full-price ticket.”
Confidence 96% comes from these sources alone. How we score
History
- 14 Oct 2026Entered in the register with 4 sources