After years apart, Elizabeth Taliana says she booked her daughter a flight from Toronto to Vancouver.
Your daughter only has a week’s vacation from work during the summer.
Although she made the reservation more than two months ago, Taliana says she recently learned that her daughter’s flight had been cancelled, a trend Canadians are becoming all too familiar with.
“I haven’t seen my daughter in almost six years so this is very distressing,” Taliana told CTVNews.ca in an email.
His story is similar to many shared with CTVNews.ca in recent days, as canceled flights, delays and lost luggage wreck Canadians’ summer travel plans, due in part to staff shortages at Canadian airports.
Some report sleeping in airports due to cancellations and delays. One person, flying from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island, said it took two canceled flights and an extra day to get home, while his luggage, filled with 70 frozen lobsters, took two days to arrive.
Responses were emailed to CTVNews.ca and not all have been independently verified.
Samantha Van Noy says she lost three pieces of luggage that, when she wrote to CTVNews.ca, hadn’t arrived in more than eight days.
Flying to Chicago for a trade show, Van Noy says his booth materials were in his luggage and the amount of money lost due to “his airline’s incompetence is incalculable.”
“I tell everyone not to fly unless absolutely necessary at this time,” he said.
Kimberly Horton, a Canadian living in Austin, Texas, said she bought three tickets in February for herself, her husband and their son to fly to Toronto to visit family, whom she hasn’t seen in three years due to COVID-19. .
“What was supposed to be a joyful celebration turned into heartbreak and disappointment,” Horton said.
She says the airline put her husband on hold because the flight was overbooked.
After calling customer service twice and waiting for an hour and 40 minutes, he says he was told nothing could be done.
“My husband was denied boarding and my son was crying when we left,” she said.
After being asked to check her carry-on due to a lack of space in the overhead bin, Horton says her bag never turned up.
“I had all my valuables, medications, contact lenses, my son’s retainers, my Invisalign, etc. Stuff you need and can’t replace on vacation,” she said.
Got her bag three days later. Meanwhile, her husband was able to catch another flight, but was evacuated due to a fuel spill.
“That was the final breaking point for my husband. He was exhausted from it all and asked for his luggage back. His bags were returned full of jet fuel and he headed home canceling his vacation with us,” Horton said.
‘PEARSON AIRPORT BRINGS OUT THE WORST IN PEOPLE NOW’
Oksana Klausmann had booked a trip from Toronto to New York City for the end of June and says that after a long check-in process, she and her daughter went through customs and discovered that they were not on the flight manifest, despite to have your boarding passes.
From there, he says, they were taken to a small room filled with other families, children and older adults, among others.
She described the room not having enough seating for everyone, forcing some to sit on the floor, and a small bathroom with no soap, toilet paper, or paper towels. Klausmann says that there were no vessels for the water fountain.
Several hours later, they received an email saying their flight had been cancelled. Then an agent arrived with a couple of policemen who confirmed the situation.
“What happened next should never happen to my daughter and me. Riots, angry people, yelling, yelling, shoving and much more,” she said. “It was unsafe, scary, violent and hostile. I took my daughter and we tried to leave a room full of 200-300+ angry people.”
Having already booked a hotel and shows in New York, Klausmann says canceling the trip was not an option.
They found a flight with another airline that cost almost the same as the entire trip. They went through another lengthy registration process, but eventually made it to New York.
Once back at Toronto Pearson, after a long delay on his return flight, Klausmann says only 15 passengers were allowed off the plane at a time due to congestion at customs.
“Believe me people weren’t happy about that and some of them started to force their way from the back of the plane to be in the front to get off the plane,” Klausmann said.
The frustrations continued as people began to wait for their luggage.
“Pearson Airport brings out the worst in people now, not everyone can keep their cool in these circumstances and they put other people at great risk,” he said.
“We, two Canadians, a daughter and a mother, who go on a trip to have fun and enjoy time together, should never have such an experience. We pay for someone’s mistakes and inability to provide the service with our own money that could be used for different purposes.
People sleep on a bench as they wait at Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport in Montreal on June 29, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz
‘DEFEATED AND DISCOURAGED’
Lori Veltkamp had planned a three-week trip to Greece with her two daughters. She bought the tickets from her in January and was scheduled to fly direct from Toronto to Athens at the end of June.
Anticipating a busy scene at Pearson, she says she and her daughters arrived more than five hours before checkout time, but were put on hold and told to wait for their assigned seats at the door.
Veltkamp says the flight suffered further delays because the plane’s meals arrived late.
She later said she was “devastated” to learn they weren’t getting on the plane because they booked their flights through a third party and were “basically put at the bottom of the list to come off standby.”
“We were quickly taken to a gate heading to Venice, but we would have an eight-hour layover in Venice before we flew to Athens,” he said.
They managed to catch the flight with a stopover in Venice. But five days into his trip, Veltkamp says they still haven’t received the three suitcases from him.
“We are three people basically without clothes and we have had to buy new things. We are hoping to receive our luggage soon, but we feel very defeated and discouraged by this whole experience,” he said.
CANCELED FLIGHTS AND CHANGE CALLS
After his flight from Prince George, BC, to Toronto was canceled for July, Harmolk Brar said he was given the option to cancel the flight online for a refund.
By opting for this, he says the airline wanted to charge him $150 plus tax in fines.
“A cancellation penalty for flights that have already been cancelled,” he said. “This is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard of.”
Jamie Boulter and her husband had plans to fly from Moncton, NB, to Hamilton, Ontario, in July for a few days.
She received an email saying her flight had been canceled and that she would receive a follow-up explaining how to get a refund or rebook, possibly flying to Toronto through the airline’s sister carrier, which she said would have created more problems since they booked. a rental car in Hamilton.
Boulter said his only options were to rebook with the same airline for July 4, the day he was supposed to fly back to New Brunswick, or cancel.
He decided to cancel and was told his refund would be less than half of what he originally paid. Boulter said he has tried unsuccessfully to reach someone at the airline by phone, an online contact form and social media.
“I had paid for three nights at a hotel and it was non-refundable when I found out my flight had been cancelled. I also paid for concert tickets at two shows, which were non-refundable,” he said.
“The concert was a two-night performance of my favorite band, playing their first album in its entirety on the 20th anniversary of that album, in their hometown. This experience was going to be huge for me. I’m so bitter about this experience. “
While Pearson has seen some of the worst travel experiences so far this year, Richard Vanderlubbe, director of the Association of Canadian Travel Agents and president of tripcentral.ca, says delays at larger airports can affect to the kids.
“It’s one of those things that’s like a well-tuned drumhead. There’s not a lot of slack in the system,” he told CTV News Channel on Saturday.
“If you have a pilot or crew calling in sick, and people keep getting sick, the airline has to scramble to find a qualified pilot for that aircraft. And by the time they get someone, it’s a matter of changing pilots.” on different paths to make this happen and have less impact on connections.
Ultimately, he says, it’s also not much fun for airlines, which have to bear the cost of delivering lost luggage by courier to people’s homes.
In response to “deficiencies in customer service,” Air Canada announced last month that it would reduce flights in July and August.
A spokesman for the company said it would reduce its schedule by 154 flights a day on average during those two months, with the worst-affected routes expected to be to and from Toronto and Montreal.
Before that, Air Canada operated approximately 1,000 flights per day.
Vanderlubbe said that while reasonable, Air Canada’s reductions will affect people’s future travel plans, potentially increasing fares as a result.
“I’m hopeful that as that plays out, we’ll see less of this and by the time we get to summer and maybe Labor Day, hopefully it will be over,” he said.
With archives from CTV News