Bad automation
Air Canada and the chatbot’s own advice
Air Canada · Aviation · Canada
A grieving passenger followed the airline’s chatbot. Its advice contradicted the airline’s own policy — and a tribunal ruled the airline owned the words.
The chatbot said
Claim the bereavement fare retroactively, within 90 days of ticket issuance.
The linked policy said
Bereavement fares cannot be claimed once travel is completed.
C$812
The award
Precedent
The actual cost
Negligent misrepresentation
The record
- In Moffatt v. Air Canada (2024 BCCRT 149, decided 14 February 2024), a British Columbia tribunal found the airline liable for negligent misrepresentation over its website chatbot’s advice.
- The chatbot told a bereaved passenger he could claim a reduced bereavement fare retroactively, within 90 days of ticket issuance — contradicting the policy page the bot itself linked to.
- The tribunal rejected Air Canada’s argument that the chatbot was “a separate legal entity,” calling it “a remarkable submission,” and awarded C$812.02 (C$650.88 in damages plus interest and fees).
The advice
Jake Moffatt asked Air Canada’s website chatbot about bereavement fares after a death in the family. The bot told him he could book now and apply for the reduced rate retroactively, “within 90 days of the date your ticket was issued.” He did. When he applied, Air Canada refused — because its actual bereavement policy, stated on a page the chatbot had itself linked to, does not allow claims after travel is completed.
So the failure was not a hallucination in the loose sense. The bot pointed at the correct policy and, in the same breath, described the opposite of it. The customer, reasonably, believed the sentence over the link.
“A remarkable submission”
Air Canada’s defence was that it should not be liable for what its chatbot said — that the bot was, in the tribunal’s paraphrase, “a separate legal entity that is responsible for its own actions.” Tribunal member Christopher Rivers called this “a remarkable submission,” and rejected it: “While a chatbot has an interactive component, it is still just a part of Air Canada’s website… It makes no difference whether the information comes from a static page or a chatbot.”
The airline was found to have committed negligent misrepresentation — it “did not take reasonable care to ensure its chatbot was accurate” — and ordered to pay Moffatt C$812.02, made up of C$650.88 in damages plus interest and tribunal fees.
Why C$812 is the least important number
The award would not cover the airline’s coffee budget for a morning. Its significance is that it is now precedent, widely cited across jurisdictions: a company owns the output of its customer-facing automation as fully as it owns any other sentence on its website. The “the bot did it” defence was tested, in public, and it failed.
The mechanism is the one our composite on good and bad automation describes exactly: a customer-facing surface, a high cost of a wrong answer borne by the customer, and no escape hatch between the bad sentence and the harm. Change any one of those and there is no case. Air Canada changed none of them, and quietly removed the chatbot afterward.
The lesson
A customer-facing bot with no human escape hatch is the company speaking in its own voice — you own its worst sentence. The cost here was C$812; the precedent is that you always will.
How we’re reading this
This was a small-claims tribunal and the award was trivial; its weight is as precedent, not penalty. The decision did not turn on what technology powered the bot, so “AI chatbot” is how the case is universally described rather than a finding of the tribunal. The 90-day window in the bot’s message was tied to ticket issuance, not the travel date.
Sources
- 01Moffatt v. Air Canada, 2024 BCCRT 149
Civil Resolution Tribunal (CanLII) · Feb 14, 2024
- 02BC Tribunal Confirms Companies Remain Liable for Information Provided by AI Chatbot
American Bar Association · Feb 29, 2024
- 03Moffatt v. Air Canada: A Misrepresentation by an AI Chatbot
McCarthy Tétrault · Feb 19, 2024
- 04Air Canada found liable for chatbot’s bad advice on bereavement rates
CBC News · Feb 16, 2024
- 05What Air Canada Lost In ‘Remarkable’ Lying AI Chatbot Case
Forbes · Feb 19, 2024
Compiled from public filings, court records, company statements and reputable press. Figures are attributed to their sources; allegations are labeled as such. Not legal or investment advice.