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With a wicked storm snarling holiday travel, some passengers at Toronto Pearson Airport camped out on the floor Friday awaiting word on when they might be able to fly to their destinations.
“I haven’t slept in 40 hours,” said Charles Busby, while trying to catch some shut-eye in Terminal 1.
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Busby left B.C. for Montreal Wednesday night expecting an easy trip.
But delays at Vancouver airport, due to massive snowfall there, caused a cascade of problems.
“I’m not the only one. There are loads of people here in the same situation,” said Busby. “Am I angry? No. But I am hungry. And I am hangry.”
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He was hoping to arrive in Montreal Friday evening — if he is lucky.
Adding to the already deep domestic disruption, WestJet cancelled flights in Ontario, Quebec and B.C. where air travel has been snarled for days already.
“Our flight was delayed four hours because they wanted to fill seats on the plane because there were so many people that had been camped out,” said Trevor Anderson, who was on his way to Costa Rica.
“So we sat on the tarmac for about an hour-and-a-half waiting for the seats to fill.”
Anderson, Niya Guinn and Ava Sandy were travelling from Kamloops through Vancouver and Toronto. They missed Thursday’s connection to Costa Rica.
They were still set up at the foot of a massive Christmas tree in Terminal 1 on Friday afternoon.
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Air Canada provided a hotel Thursday night and gave them travel vouchers.
“Fingers crossed. We’ve only been here for a day. I’ve seen people who have been here for a lot longer,” said Anderson.
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A wide swath of the United States remains in the storm’s grip. Delays and cancellations there are adding to the grim travel picture.
Western University foreign exchange students Dean Fellner and Aisha Osman, who were on their way to Los Angeles, were sleeping on the floor beside a Peel Regional Police post at Pearson.
“We’ve been here since 4 a.m. and we’re hoping that our flight doesn’t get cancelled. And if it does, then we’re kind of just stuck here,” said Osman. “It’s just been hours of waiting.”
Giacomo Direboco was struggling to rebook a flight home to Milan, Italy after his connecting flight from Pearson to New York was scrubbed.
“I’m so angry,” he said, sitting on the floor scrolling through elevated prices for a new ticket. “Because I paid the flight and it was cancelled and no one has given me my money back.”
The impact on travel is expected to last for days.
As of Friday afternoon, 23% of flights leaving Pearson were delayed and 32% were cancelled, according to flight data tracker FlightAware.
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