Air Canada held liable for its website chatbot's bad advice: tribunal orders C$812.02 (Moffatt v. Air Canada, 2024 BCCRT 149)

The problem

In November 2022, after the death of their grandmother, Jake Moffatt used the support chatbot on Air Canada’s website while researching flights (source [1]). The chatbot told Moffatt that bereavement rates could be claimed retroactively: that a passenger who had “already travelled” could submit their ticket “for a reduced bereavement rate” within 90 days of issue by completing the Ticket Refund Application form (source [1]). That advice contradicted Air Canada’s own “Bereavement travel” webpage, hyperlinked from the chatbot’s answer, which states the policy does not apply to requests for bereavement consideration after travel has been completed (source [1]). Relying on the chatbot, Moffatt booked full-fare Vancouver–Toronto flights, paying C$1,630.36, and was later refused the retroactive refund (source [1]; source [2]).

What was built

An automated support chatbot on aircanada.com answering customer policy questions (source [3]). No fetched source discloses the vendor or the underlying technology, and the tribunal decision never describes the chatbot as AI; this story therefore makes no claim about its architecture (source [1]).

The outcome

On 14 February 2024, BC Civil Resolution Tribunal member Christopher C. Rivers found Air Canada liable for negligent misrepresentation (source [1]; source [2]; source [3]). Air Canada had argued it could not be held liable for information supplied by its chatbot: “In effect, Air Canada suggests the chatbot is a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions. This is a remarkable submission,” Rivers wrote (source [1]; source [2]; source [3]). The tribunal held that “It should be obvious to Air Canada that it is responsible for all the information on its website. It makes no difference whether the information comes from a static page or a chatbot,” and found that “Air Canada did not take reasonable care to ensure its chatbot was accurate” (source [1]; source [2]; source [3]).

The order was C$812.02 within 14 days: C$650.88 in damages, C$36.14 in pre-judgment interest, and C$125 in CRT fees (source [1]; source [2]). The C$650.88 damages figure was the difference between the C$1,630.36 Moffatt paid and the C$979.48 the tribunal found the flights should have cost at bereavement fares (source [1]). Air Canada told Ars Technica it would comply with the ruling and considered the matter closed (source [3]). Two days after the ruling, Ars reported that “there appeared to be no chatbot support available” on Air Canada’s website (source [3]).

Weakest load-bearing source. The three critical facts (the C$812.02 order, the “separate legal entity” defence and its rejection, and the standard-of-care finding) each rest on a Tier 1 primary (the signed tribunal decision) corroborated by two mutually independent Tier 2 newsrooms, so they are strong. The soft spot is the chatbot’s removal: it rests on a single Ars Technica observation, hedged as “appeared to be” and never confirmed by Air Canada, so this page does not assert the chatbot was retired or tie any removal to the ruling (source [3]). One further limit: because CanLII returns a 403 to automated fetches from our host, the primary decision is cited from its byte-verified Wayback snapshot rather than a live pull.

How this was verified

Method: The primary is the tribunal’s own signed decision, Moffatt v. Air Canada, 2024 BCCRT 149 (BC Civil Resolution Tribunal, member Christopher C. Rivers, 14 Feb 2024), captured to the Wayback Machine (snapshot 20240509000529) and quote-verified line by line. Every critical quotation and figure was independently re-confirmed against two reputable newsrooms that each carry the facts firsthand, CBC News (Jason Proctor) and Ars Technica (Ashley Belanger), captured live and on the Wayback Machine. The tribunal is the origin and is never counted as one of the independent corroborators. Every figure in this file (the C$812.02 order and its breakdown, the C$1,630.36 paid, and the C$979.48 fare) was re-checked against the primary decision on the date below. Date verified: 2026-08-20. Badge: an independent adjudicator’s public record supports every critical claim; the green badge is set only by the human pre-green sign-off, never by an agent.

Related case files

• NYC’s MyCity chatbot told businesses to break the law: another public-facing support chatbot that confidently gave wrong (here, unlawful) guidance, testing who owns a bot’s answers.
• a Chevrolet dealer’s chatbot was tricked into a $1 Tahoe offer: the same legal question in commercial form, is a company bound by what its website bot says?
• DPD disabled its chatbot after it swore at a customer: a customer-service chatbot pulled after it went off-script, the operational echo of the “reasonable care” failure found here.
• Klarna rehired humans after its AI-support walk-back: the strategic counterpart, a company reversing course on customer-service automation after quality problems.

Path to green

The critical claims rest on a public tribunal decision, an independent adjudicator’s signed record, not any party’s self-reported metric. Remaining human steps: a recorded Air Canada statement confirming the chatbot’s status/retirement and its technology (media@aircanada.ca), and optionally a certified tribunal copy of 2024 BCCRT 149 as a second artifact host (the tribunal’s own Lexum viewer renders the decision body client-side).

Sources

1. CanLII (BC Civil Resolution Tribunal) · Moffatt v. Air Canada, 2024 BCCRT 149 · 2024-02-14 · https://www.canlii.org/en/bc/bccrt/doc/2024/2024bccrt149/2024bccrt149.html . Tier 1 (primary; signed adjudicator’s decision; cited via Wayback snapshot 20240509000529 because CanLII 403s automated fetches).
2. CBC News (Jason Proctor) · Air Canada found liable for chatbot’s bad advice on bereavement rates · 2024-02-15 · https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/air-canada-chatbot-lawsuit-1.7116416 . Tier 2 (independent press; Wayback 20240215211938).
3. Ars Technica (Ashley Belanger) · Air Canada must honor refund policy invented by airline’s chatbot · 2024-02-16 · https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/02/air-canada-must-honor-refund-policy-invented-by-airlines-chatbot/ . Tier 2 (independent press; Wayback 20240216174650).