Flight frustrations continue in Calgary as hundreds of trips cancelled

Major storms in British Columbia and Ontario continue to create travel troubles for people in Calgary, with dozens or flights to and from the city cancelled and some people stuck in the airport for days at a time.

It has some people forgoing their entire vacations or scrambling to make alternative plans to head home for Christmas.

Sarah and Ed O'Brien were supposed to be on a beach in Mexico right now. Instead, their Tuesday flight from Calgary never left and they feel like they've been left in limbo by the airline.

"I would like to hope WestJet maybe pays more attention to their policies," Sarah said Friday.

"Certainly we can understand there's been a lot of factors that have been leading up to this. We weren't looking for any extra accommodations, we were looking for them to inform us what we're were supposed to do. If we were in fact cancelled, we want to be refunded," she said.

WestJet says the extreme weather events are leading to unprecedented cancellations and demand and it is allowing travellers to change their plans free of charge from now until December 28.

The O'Briens say they can't even get in contact with someone at the company who can help them or tell them what the next steps are.

"There was literally zero movement on what was actually happening until Thursday at about 1:30 p.m. We were supposed to be in Mazatlan at 2 o'clock on Tuesday," said Ed O'Brien.

The O'Briens say they can't even get in contact with someone at the company who can help them or tell them what the next steps are.

WESTJET ISSUES STATEMENT

They're just one of hundreds of families who have had travel plans upended. WestJet proactively cancelled all flights arriving and departing from both Vancouver and Toronto airports for all of Friday.

As of Friday morning, 300 of the airline's flights had been cancelled for the day -- about 50 per cent of what was scheduled.

Just after 6:30 p.m., WestJet issued a release, stating that 333 flights were cancelled Friday. It added that "Vancouver (YVR) operations have gradually resumed this evening."

There were 24 flights cancelled for Saturday as well, with the airline adding "Toronto (YYZ) operations scheduled to resume at  7 a.m. local time."

WestJet COO Diederik Pen issued the following statement:

"To our guests, we know how important your travel plans are at this time of year and every single WestJetter feels the weight of not being able to get you where you want to be," he said. "We sincerely apologize for the disruption many have experienced and appreciate your continued patience and understanding. Our teams on the ground, in the air and behind the scenes are working tirelessly to recover our operations, while trying to limit any further disruption to important holiday travel plans.

"The prolonged and extreme weather events that have impacted multiple regions across Canada are unlike anything we’ve experienced," he added. "With the recent storms in British Columbia, Southern Ontario and Quebec, we took a proactive and measured approach to protect our operations and prioritize recovery flying.

"The decision to stand down more flights was extremely difficult, but it was necessary, so that we could be best prepared to safely fly as many guests, with as little disruption as possible this weekend."

 

UNUSUAL WELCOMES

Despite the major delays, there are some people who made the homecoming trips, arriving to warm and unusual welcomes from family.

Taylor Bornyk donned an inflatable koala suit to welcome his sister's family from Australia.

"She was supposed to be here on Wednesday coming from Brisbane through Vancouver, but the Vancouver airport got closed, so she had to find another flight. She flew to LA, stayed the night, then flew to Salt Lake City and is now flying here this morning," Bornyk said.

The major airlines hope to have nearly-normal flights heading in and out of Vancouver and Toronto by Saturday morning, though the companies acknowledge many more cancellations are likely.