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Case study · Tribunal decision

Air Canada: liability for a chatbot’s answers

A tribunal ruled that an airline was responsible for what its website chatbot told a grieving customer.

Principles involved

When and where

February 2024

Canada

What happened

After his grandmother died, Jake Moffatt asked Air Canada’s website chatbot about bereavement fares. The chatbot told him he could book at the normal price and claim the reduced fare within 90 days of buying the ticket. The airline’s own policy page, which the chatbot linked to, said the opposite: bereavement fares couldn’t be claimed after travel.

When the airline refused the refund, Mr. Moffatt took the case to British Columbia’s Civil Resolution Tribunal. Air Canada argued, in effect, that the chatbot was responsible for its own answers. On February 14, 2024, the tribunal rejected that. The chatbot was part of Air Canada’s website, and the airline was responsible for all the information on it, whether it came from a static page or a chatbot. The tribunal found negligent misrepresentation and ordered the airline to pay C$812.02 in damages, interest and fees.

What the sources establish

The tribunal’s decision establishes these facts and its reasoning. It’s a small-claims ruling in one Canadian province, and Air Canada gave no evidence about how its chatbot worked. It doesn’t set a rule for every country, and it says nothing about the technology behind the chatbot.

Implications

Customers shouldn’t have to check one part of your website against another. Whatever your AI tells people is your organization speaking. If an assistant can make promises, someone has to own what it says: the policy it draws on, the answers it gives and the route to a person when it’s wrong.

Recommended practice

  1. 01If you’re responsible for a customer-facing assistant, make sure it answers from your current policies, and test it on the questions customers actually ask.
  2. 02Give customers an easy way to reach a person, and act when the assistant is wrong.
  3. 03When you use AI to answer a customer yourself, check the answer against the policy before you send it.

Sources

What each source establishes, and its limits. The practices and recommendations on this page are ours, and the facts come from the sources. See every source we use.

  1. Moffatt v. Air Canada, 2024 BCCRT 149 Civil Resolution Tribunal of British Columbia · February 14, 2024 · Tribunal decision Rejected the airline’s argument that its chatbot was responsible for its own answers, held the airline responsible for all the information on its website and found negligent misrepresentation, awarding C$812.02. Limits: A small-claims decision in one province. No evidence was given about how the chatbot worked.

Cite this page

Founderz (2026). Air Canada: liability for a chatbot’s answers. The RUAI Standard, 2026 edition. Developed by Founderz in collaboration with Microsoft. https://responsibleai.founderz.com/toolkit/case-studies/air-canada-chatbot-liability

Licensed under CC BY 4.0: share and adapt with attribution.