Porter to pay $2K after woman denied boarding due to flight tickets missing birthdates: court

A British Columbia court has ruled that Porter Airlines must reimburse a woman for the cost of rebooking her travel, after it refused to let her board a flight because her ticket did not include her date of birth.

In a decision handed down this week by Alissa Reynolds of B.C.’s Civil Resolution Tribunal , Porter was ordered to pay passenger Dawn McCormick $2,030.98, an amount which includes pre-judgment interest and court fees.

Court heard that McCormick’s travel agent booked a trip to Madrid for McCormick and a friend identified as “CS” with Air Transat on May 7, 2024. The itinerary was Vancouver to Montreal on Porter Airlines, and Montreal to Madrid on Air Transat.

However, Porter refused to board the two passengers in Vancouver, saying the travel agent did not include their birth dates in the booking. Porter said this was not caused by its action or omission. McCormick said the booking was correct and blamed the error on Porter’s computer issues.

McCormick had to rebook the next available flight to Montreal so as not to miss the connection to Madrid. Unable to fly directly to Montreal, she booked a flight to Toronto and a separate flight from Toronto to Montreal, using two separate credit cards. She said one credit card company reimbursed her for the Toronto to Montreal flight. However, the other refused to reimburse the flight from Vancouver to Toronto, leaving her to pay $1,783.86.

McCormick provided the  court with the PNR (passenger name records) from her travel agent’s booking. “The PNR shows that the travel agent included both Ms. McCormick and CS’s birth dates in the booking,” the ruling states. “Porter does not address this evidence in their submissions but maintains that the travel agent made the error.”

Porter provided its own internal emails to the court. “An email dated January 14, 2025, from a Porter technology support agent said TS, which is the code for Air Transat, did not add the birth dates to the booking,” the ruling notes. “So, I find Porter’s own evidence shows Ms. McCormick’s travel agent did not make the mistake. I find the mistake clearly arose in the codeshare communication between Air Transat and Porter.”

The ruling adds that the email “also provided Porter’s procedure when this type of error arises. It said that customer service representatives can add the birth dates in Porter’s GoNow system and save their changes in Finalize.” But the Porter customer service representative did not do this.

Finally, it notes that Porter recommends passengers arrive at the Vancouver airport two hours ahead of departure. “Ms. McCormick says she and CS arrived at the Porter check-in desk at 6:15 am. That is 150 minutes before their scheduled departure time,” it states. “So, I find Ms. McCormick and CS arrived in plenty of time for Porter to correct the error, had the Porter customer service representative followed Porter’s procedure.”

The pre-judgment interest on the damages, from May 7, 2024, to the date of this decision, came to $122.12. Civil Resolution Tribunal fees added another $125 to the total.

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