Injured Flight Attendant Wins Her Workers’ Comp Appeal

An Air Canada flight attendant who worked out of BC but lived in Manitoba suffered a work injury while working an international flight. The Workers’ Comp Appeals Tribunal denied her benefits under Sec. 8(1) of the Workers’ Comp Act which bans coverage of injuries occurring outside the province. But the court overturned the ruling as unreasonable. The Tribunal’s reasoning left the attendant out in the cold without taking into account the Act’s broader objective of covering workers for injuries; nor did the Section 8(1) analysis hold up given that the Tribunal didn’t even consider which airspace the plane was in when the injury occurred [Air Canada v Workers’ Compensation Appeal Tribunal, 2017 BCSC 1609 (CanLII), Sept. 12, 2017].