Three of the busiest air travel markets in the Americas and Europe each answer the same question differently: what does an airline owe you when your flight lands hours late? Canada measures how late you arrive, the European Union measures how far you were flying, and Brazil pays no cash for a delay at all. Two of the three rulebooks are being rewritten right now.
The comparison matters because the money is close and the logic is not. Canada’s top payment for a delay is C$1,000. The EU’s top payment is 600 euros. Converted at the Bank of Canada’s daily average rate for August 21, 2026, of C$1.6075 to the euro, that 600 euros is C$964.50, which lands within four percent of the Canadian figure. A traveller could be forgiven for assuming the two systems work the same way. They do not agree on a single thing except roughly how much to pay.
