By the time Crystal Kelly finally got through to WestJet customer service, after waiting 27 hours on hold — including a restless night spent sleeping with phone in hand listening to the holding tone on speakerphone — the 33-year-old mother of three had already been stranded in Chicago, away from her kids, for half a week.
What was meant to be their first weekend vacation in five years had turned into a “nightmare” for Crystal and her husband Deryk, after the couple were roused by a 3 a.m. notification Monday morning informing them their flight that same day had been cancelled amid the WestJet mechanics strike.
She described desperately trying to arrange care from Chicago for her three children, three, six and 14 in Carstairs, near Calgary.
“So I’m trying to find arrangements for friends to take my son to daycare and pick them up until my mom gets off her shift at night.
“I (had) no one to watch my son. It’s been really awful.”
The Kellys were among the more than 100,000 passengers affected by the 1,171 cancelled WestJet flights, as of time of writing, following a surprise strike from aircraft mechanics over the weekend — including 79 cancellations on Tuesday, 30 on Wednesday and eight on Thursday — despite the airline and the union reaching a deal just after midnight Monday. WestJet said it has now “stabilized,” and that no more cancellations related to the strike are expected.
“Teams across WestJet are working diligently to support all impacted guests as we rebuild to normal operations,” a spokesperson for the airline said in an email. “Unfortunately, as July long weekend is a peak travel period across Canada, limited availability exists both within our network and through alternative carriers, making options for re-accommodation extremely challenging.”
That being said, “there is an obligation on the part of the airline to maintain communications and advise the passengers — promptly,” John Gradek, a lecturer in aviation management at McGill University said.
”… They should have at least communicated: ‘Please, do not call, because you’re not going to get answers because we’re really busy.’
But none of that ever happened,” he continued. “I think WestJet messed up on that one.”
WestJet passengers stranded abroad after strike
Crystal said the ordeal left the couple feeling “abandoned by WestJet and totally hopeless and lost in this giant city that I’ve never been in before — with no way home and little kids desperately waiting for me to get back.”
As she and her husband waited on hold, they saw WestJet selling tickets online for a direct flight from Chicago to Calgary on Wednesday — “but by the time we got through, they weren’t there anymore. And they were $1,500 a pop,” she explained.
When the couple finally got through on Tuesday, a WestJet representative offered to rebook the couple on an alternate flight — with a one-day layover in Minneapolis — that would get them home by Friday. Crystal rejected the offer, saying: “The last thing I want to do is be stuck in Minneapolis and have our flight get cancelled in another new city.”
Finally, after hours of more waiting, the couple was offered a direct flight from Chicago to Calgary scheduled for late Thursday, which they accepted with relief. Crystal said she “racked up another credit card” just paying for the extra hotel, food, phone and daycare fees.
“We saved up for this trip, but we weren’t expecting to be here for so much longer,” she continued. “Everything’s just been on credit cards, and honestly, if they don’t help us pay any of it off, it’s probably going to take me close to a year to pay this credit card off.”
The Kellys were far from alone. Julie Borgdorff, a Brantford-based wedding musician, her husband Aaron and their three young children also found themselves stranded abroad in Cancun for days after their Saturday flight with WestJet was abruptly cancelled.
“I was honestly quite rattled. I was pretty scared,” Julie said. “I kept on going online, after I realized that WestJet had abandoned us, essentially, and trying to find flights. Because there were five of us, it was really hard to find anything — every time I put our family’s information into the website, the flights would just disappear because they were getting booked up.”
Compounding her stress was news of the impending Hurricane Beryl, expected to impact Cancun after weaving a path of destruction through Jamaica. Eventually, Julie managed to book a flight home on Air Canada Wednesday for more than $4,000 — almost four times the price of her cancelled WestJet flight — an amount that caused her to have a “full-on panic attack.”
“The amount that we were paying was far beyond what we had even paid on our vacation in the first place,” she said, adding that the family also paid nearly $3,400 to stay the extra four days at “literally the cheapest resort for five people that we could find last minute.”
“We’re gonna have to borrow money, one way or another, to pay this amount off,” Julie said.
My WestJet flight was cancelled. What can I do?
According to Gulnaz Bulbul, an assistant professor of aviation management at the University of Waterloo, “passengers may be entitled to compensation for delays and cancellations” under the Canadian Air Passenger Protection Regulations.
“This includes monetary compensation for significant delays and other inconveniences,” as well as the airline being required to “offer rebooking on the next available flight or a full refund to affected passengers.”
The spokesperson for WestJet added that, “in the event re-accommodation with WestJet or an alternative airline isn’t available within 48 hours of a guest’s scheduled departure, guests are entitled to request a refund to their original form of payment.”
Gradek said that even if passengers end up paying for return flights out of their own pockets, as was the case for Julie, WestJet is still obligated to reimburse them for their flight.
“If WestJet refuses or is taking their time in getting that accommodation done, the passenger does, in fact, have the ability to buy a ticket on their own, on another carrier, to get home,” he explained.
”(Travellers can then) submit that bill, that invoice to WestJet for repayment, and WestJet is obligated, under the regulations, to pay for that return trip.”
Both Crystal and Julie said they intend to invoice WestJet for her flight home.
“What we’re going to do is make a claim and see how much money we can get back from them,” Crystal said.
