A Kingston man is demanding a full refund and additional compensation from Air Canada after hastily making alternate travel plans for the “trip of a lifetime” to New Zealand and Australia.
Jeff Downie said he was notified two days before his scheduled flight on Aug. 15 that his departure was “at risk of cancellation.”
He received no further updates or confirmation by Friday morning with his flight still supposedly scheduled to depart at 6 p.m. for Vancouver, where he was to catch a connecting flight to Sydney, Australia.
Amid the uncertainty and the numerous flight cancellations that caused chaos at airports across the country, Downie decided to cancel his Air Canada ticket and scrambled to make alternate arrangements through the United States.
Early Friday, about 12 hours before his originally scheduled flight, Downie drove with his daughter, Taylor, to Syracuse, N.Y., then caught a flight to Newark, N.J., where he was awaiting a United Airlines flight to Houston, Texas, and, finally, a connection to Auckland, New Zealand.
“Air Canada cancelled the same long-haul flight (on Thursday) that I booked for Friday,” Downie said in a phone interview during his Newark stopover.
“I don’t know what they’re waiting for, and not offering any option. That’s the real piss-off,” he said. “Two days ago, they could have told us to go online, get a refund and go figure out alternative transportation. It still would have been frustrating because I booked this ticket eight months ago at a significant discount, and now I’m paying same-day rates.
“We figured it out, but we’re paying a premium.”
Downie said he had been among the many Canadians choosing not to cross the U.S. border amid the tariff and trade war.
“I was happy to stay in Canada, happy to spend my money in Canada, but they’re making it impossible for people,” he said.
“I get the labour disruption, I get the challenge for (Air Canada). But to hold people’s money is the big issue — to limit people’s options and then have no communication, still, hours before the flight,” he said.
“All the other flights are long gone. Those flights (with other carriers) are competitively filling up because everybody’s trying to make alternate plans.”
More than 10,000 Air Canada flight attendants were poised to walk off the job around 1 a.m. ET on Saturday, followed by a company-imposed lockout if the two sides couldn’t reach an eleventh-hour deal.
Air Canada warned it was cancelling around 500 flights previously scheduled to take off Aug. 15 in anticipation of the work stoppage, with a full halt looming for Aug. 16.
It said it would notify customers of cancellations through emails and text messages, and recommended against going to airport sunless passengers had confirmed bookings and their flights still showed as operating.
Customers whose flights were being cancelled would be offered full refunds. Air Canada said it was also allowing customers to change their travel plans without fees if they chose to do so.
Most travelers at the Ottawa International Airport who spoke to the Ottawa Sun on Friday morning said they were able to board domestic Air Canada flights with little to no disruption.
There was little sign of the chaos reported at other airports across Canada amid the widespread cancellations.
The Ottawa International Airport Authority said it was continuing to monitor the situation between Air Canada and CUPE, the union representing the flight attendants, and advised those with flights booked through that carrier to confirm their flight status online “in anticipation of disruptions beginning Aug. 16.”
“Passengers flying with other airlines from YOW (Ottawa) are not expected to experience any disruptions,” the airport authority posted on social media Friday.
Downie said he felt for those people who had flights booked for travel to weddings or other events, along with hotel rooms reserved, only to be told their flights had been cancelled.
He sent a letter to Air Canada demanding a full refund and compensation for his additional travel expenses. He said he received only an automated reply from Air Canada thanking him for his “feedback.”
Due to the high volume of requests, the message stated, it could take as long as 30 days for an Air Canada representative to get back to him.
“I’ve got to get home at some point,” Downie said. “I only booked a one-way ticket, so, as I sit here, I still don’t know what Air Canada is going to do with my return. So how am I getting home? I need to figure that out over the next two weeks.”
CUPE said it was eager to avoid a work stoppage by sitting down to negotiate, while the airline had requested that federal jobs minister Patty Hajdu step in and direct the parties to binding arbitration.
Arielle Meloul-Wechsler, Air Canada’s executive vice-president and chief human resources officer, had said earlier this week that resolving the deadlock through negotiations would be the best outcome.
“Should that all not materialize, we do have to think about the very serious disruptions that would ensue,” Meloul-Wechsler told reporters on Aug. 14.
With files from The Canadian Press
