Canada's One-Man Air Force – and His Calculated Crusade Against Airlines

If there’s one highly concentrated industry that the federal government refuses to fix (perhaps more so than others), it’s airlines. It’s why Canadians pay some of the highest prices to fly and suffer under some of the weakest passenger protections in the world.The government has ignored a major report issued by the Competition Bureau last year that has recommendations on how to improve the problems. The passenger complaint backlog sits at close to 100,000, with each individual issue taking years to resolve. Worse still, according to a CBC Go Public investigation published in January, the feds are actively delaying making airlines pay for the complaints system.With such inaction and even complicity by officials, other resistance emerges. Enter Gabor Lukacs.For nearly 20 years, this one name has been striking fear into airlines by becoming synonymous with air passenger rights – in fact, Air Passenger Rights is his group, which has more than 274,000 members on Facebook.Lukacs has fought – and won – dozens of court battles with the airlines, getting passengers justice and the money they’re owed in the process. He’s a fixture in virtually every news report on airline misdeeds, which is to say he’s on TV a lot. He’s the nation’s veritable avatar of passenger anger.But who is Gabor Lukacs? Why has he taken up this crusade? What drives him?A child math prodigy, Lukacs escaped an abusive mother in Hungary when he was just eight years old and ended up doing a PhD in Canada at just 16. He joins Do Not Pass Go this week to share his amazing story and how it – and his love of math – fuels his crusade for the justice that the government refuses to deliver.For more, check out airpassengerrights.ca.Do Not Pass Go is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to Do Not Pass Go at www.donotpassgo.ca/subscribe