After years of separation, Elizabeth Taliana says she booked a flight for her daughter from Toronto to Vancouver.
Her daughter only gets one week off from work in the summer.
Although she made the reservation more than two months ago, Taliana says she only recently learned her daughter’s flight had been canceled, a trend Canadians are becoming all too familiar with.
“I haven’t seen my daughter in almost six years, so it’s very concerning,” Taliana said in an email to CTVNews.ca.
Her story is similar to many shared with CTVNews.ca in recent days as canceled flights, delays and lost luggage throw a wrench into Canadians’ summer travel plans, in part due to understaffing at Canadian airports.
Some report sleeping in airports due to cancellations and delays. One man 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, at the time she wrote to CTVNews.ca, hadn’t arrived in more than eight days.
Flying to Chicago for a trade show, Van Noy says her booth materials were in her luggage and the amount of money lost due to her airline’s “incompetence” is incalculable.
“I tell everyone not to fly on a plane unless it’s absolutely necessary right now,” she 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 she hadn’t seen in three years because COVID-19.
“What should have been a joyous celebration turned into heartbreak and disappointment,” Horton said.
She says the airline put her husband on standby because the flight was overbooked.
After calling customer service twice and being on hold for an hour and 40 minutes, she says she was told nothing could be done.
“My husband was denied boarding and my son was crying as we left,” she said.
After being asked to check her carry-on due to a lack of space in the overhead compartment, Horton says her bag never showed up.
“It had all my valuables, medication, contact lenses, my son’s braces, my Invisalign, etc. Things you need and can’t replace on vacation,” she said.
She received her bag three days later. Meanwhile, her husband was able to board another flight, but he was evacuated due to a fuel spill.
“That was the final breaking point for my husband. He was exhausted from everything and asked for his luggage back. They returned his bags smelling of jet fuel and he went home, canceling his holiday with us,” Horton said.
“PEARSON AIRPORT IS BRINGING OUT THE WORST IN PEOPLE NOW”
Oksana Klausman booked a trip from Toronto to New York for the end of June and says that after a long check-in process, she and her daughter went through customs only to find they weren’t on the flight manifest even though they had their boarding passes .
From there, she says they were taken to a small room filled with other families, children and the elderly, among others.
She described the room as not having enough space for everyone, forcing some to sit on the floor, and a small toilet without soap, toilet paper or paper towels. Klausman says there were no glasses for the fountain.
A few hours later, they receive an email that their flight has been cancelled. An agent then arrived with two police officers who confirmed the situation.
“What happened next should never happen to my daughter and me. Riots, angry people, screaming, yelling, pushing and more,” she said. “It was unsafe, scary, violent and hostile. I took my daughter and we tried to leave the room full of more than 200 or 300 angry people.’
Having already booked a hotel and shows in New York, Klausman says canceling the trip was not an option.
They found a flight on another airline that cost almost as much 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 the return flight, Klausman says only 15 passengers were allowed to leave the plane at a time due to customs congestion.
“Believe me, people were not happy about that and some of them started to force their way out of the back of the plane to be in the front to get off the plane,” Klausman said.
The frustration only continued as people began to wait for their luggage.
“Pearson Airport is bringing out the worst in people now, not everyone can stay calm in these circumstances and they are putting other people at great risk,” she said.
“We, two Canadian women, a daughter and a mother, are going on a road trip to have fun and enjoy time together, we should never have an experience like this.” We paid for someone’s mistakes and inability to provide a service with our own money that we could have used for different purposes.”
People sleep on a bench while waiting at Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport, in Montreal, June 29, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiortz
“DEFEATED AND DISCOURAGED”
Lori Veltkamp has planned a three-week trip to Greece with her two daughters. She bought her tickets in January and was supposed to fly direct from Toronto to Athens at the end of June.
Expecting a busy scene at Pearson, she says she and her daughters arrived more than five hours before their departure time, but were put on standby and told to wait for their seats at the gate.
Veltkamp says the flight had additional delays due to the delayed food on the plane.
She later said she was “devastated” when she learned they wouldn’t be getting on the plane because they had booked their flights through a third party and were “basically put at the bottom of the list to get off the plane.” readiness’.
“We were rushed to the gate to board for Venice, but there would be an eight-hour layover in Venice before we flew to Athens,” she said.
They managed to catch the flight with a layover in Venice. But five days into their trip, Veltkamp says they still haven’t received their three suitcases.
“We are three people without any clothes and we had to buy new things. We hope to receive our luggage soon, but we feel very defeated and disheartened by this whole experience,” she said.
CANCELED FLIGHTS AND CALLED FOR CHANGE
After his July flight from Prince George, British Columbia, to Toronto was canceled, 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 penalties.
“A penalty for canceling flights that have already been cancelled,” he said. “That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard of.”
Jamie Boulter and her husband had plans to fly from Moncton, New Brussels, to Hamilton, Ont., in July for a few days.
She received an email saying their flight had been canceled and that they would receive a follow-up message explaining how to get a refund or rebook, potentially flying to Toronto through the airline’s subsidiary instead, which she said would cause more problems since they booked a rental car in Hamilton.
Boulter said her only options were to rebook with the same airline for July 4, the day she was supposed to fly back to New Brunswick, or to cancel.
She opted out and was told her refund would be less than half of what she originally paid. Boulter said she tried unsuccessfully to reach someone at the airline via phone, an online contact form and social media.
“I had paid for a three-night hotel stay that was non-refundable until I found out my flight had been cancelled. I also paid for concert tickets for two concerts that were non-refundable,” she said.
“The concert was a two night performance of my favorite band playing their entire first album on the 20th anniversary of that album, in their hometown. This experience was going to be huge for me. I’m so upset about this experience.”
Although Pearson has seen some of the worst travel so far this year, Richard Vanderlubbe, director of the Association of Canadian Travel Agencies and president of tripcentral.ca, says delays at larger airports can be passed on to smaller ones.
“It’s one of those things that looks like a well-tuned drum head. There’s not a lot of gridlock in the system,” he told CTV News Channel on Saturday.
“If you have a pilot or crew calling in sick, and people are still getting sick, the airline has to struggle to find a qualified pilot for that plane. And until they catch someone, it’s a matter of changing the pilots on different routes to make that happen and have less impact on the connections.”
After all, he says, it’s not much fun for the airlines, who have to shoulder the cost of couriering lost luggage to people’s homes, either.
In response to a “deficiency in customer service,” Air Canada last month announced it would cut flights in July and August.
A spokesman for the company said it would reduce its schedule by an average of 154 flights a day over those two months, with the most affected routes expected to be to and from Toronto and Montreal.
Previously, Air Canada operated approximately 1,000 flights per day.
Vanderlubbe said that while reasonable, Air Canada’s cuts will affect people’s future travel plans, with fares likely to rise as a result.
“Hopefully as this develops, we’ll see less of it and as we get into the summer and maybe Labor Day, hopefully it will go away,” he said.
With files from CTV News
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