October 05, 2018
A Canadian tribunal has awarded an Iranian-Canadian family $1,100 after a British Columbia travel agency misspelled their toddler’s middle name, as a result of which British Airways refused to let their child board a flight from Tehran to Canada.
An employee at Richmond’s Plan-It With Pam Holidays had misspelled Arad Aria’s middle name on his airline tickets and did nothing to correct it when the family pointed out the error, according to a recent decision from the Civil Resolution Tribunal.
The tribunal awarded the Aria family more than $1,100 from the travel company, after finding it responsible for leaving mother and son stuck in Iran for two days.
The father, Arman Aria, said he was happy with the ruling, but “the pain and frustration, the money isn’t going to cover that.”
The family had booked the tickets over the telephone in October 2017, according to the tribunal documents. When Aria’s wife, Azadeh Lotfifar, visited Plan-It With Pam’s offices, she noticed the child’s middle name was spelled wrong.
She pointed it out, but an employee told her “that the middle name is not always that important, as airlines look at the first and last names,” tribunal member Kate Campbell told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC).
Lotfifar and the little boy flew to Iran on Lufthansa without a problem, but they were turned away when they arrived at the airport for their return trip on December 1.
The father remembers getting the call from his wife in Iran. It was “awful,” he told CBC. “The whole time my son was crying in the airport,” Aria said. The little boy was worn down after a month of traveling, and “he was constantly crying because he was sick.”
Aria said he spoke with airport officials and representatives from the airline but was told he’d have to fix things through the agent who had booked the tickets. It was late on a Friday night, so he had to wait until the next morning to visit the company’s office.
Aria paid for the new tickets out of pocket. The travel company’s manager, Dean Malik, denied that the misspelled name was the reason for the ordeal — he blamed the fact that Lotfifar had two passports under different names, according to the decision.
But Aria received an email from British Airways a few days after the incident that contradicted that story. “I’ve checked our records and see that the name of your child on the booking and on the ticket did not match. This was the only reason for you not being allowed to board your flight,” the email said.
In her decision, Campbell said Plan-It With Pam was negligent and had failed to meet a reasonable standard of care for its customer. She awarded Aria the cost of the new ticket, plus $200 for food and two nights’ hotel accommodation in Iran.