Hundreds of Newfoundlanders have been stranded in TO since Sunday through Monday and WestJet is telling them the earliest they can get home is Boxing Day. That surely has to be unreasonable? It’s only December 20 :haha: B’ys, get it together. Charter a flight if you have to do so.

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Aren’t airlines duty bound to book passengers on another carrier at a certain point? Or if WS is digging in their heels on this, why not use a 787 to get them there?

YVR completely closed? I had heard arrivals were done, but now departures are halted and they are clearing the field.

There are planes still not parked from last night.

Canada east of Thunder Bay no longer exists for WestJet. St. John's might as well be in another galaxy..........

It’s sad to see. Curious if WJ and AC have reversed places. When I lived in Winnipeg and flew home at least a couple of times per year, the two memories that have stuck with me was a WJ flight being delayed solely because they were waiting for NLers on a connecting flight who wouldn’t get home for Christmas if our flight didn’t wait for them. They of course let us know so everyone on the plane was fine, cheered when they arrived, etc.

And at the other end, delayed reaching Toronto on AC and the woman booking my new connection said, “Nothing in St. John’s but I can get you to Halifax tonight. Could someone come and pick you up?” Umm… d’ya have either map lying around, I wanna show ya something.

Lol.

Maybe she thought you wanted to go to Saint John, NB.

There is an old saying "Companies get the unions they deserve" that basically means that the companies that treat their workers poorly are the ones that end up with unions that are difficult and belligerent.

The same applies to airlines and regulators. Airlines that behave poorly are the ones that end up with demanding and consumer friendly government regulation. No one should be surprised that Europe, where the ULCC concept came from is the market with the best consumer protection and compensation rules in the world.

WestJet and these ULCC with this kind of nonsense are going to drive public pressure to tighten consumer protection laws.

Get ready for a total deluge of airline horror stories today:

Jill
@jilly_beess
49m
The captain just said we were going to be towed closer to the terminal and then MAYBE we could get air stairs and busses to the terminal. We’re going on 10 hours now with only water. #yvr #yvrairport
@yvrairport

@FlairAirlines

https://twitter.com/jilly_beess/stat...30039007920130

Yep & 3 WestJet Hawaii - to Vancouver YVR early morning arriving flights has diverted to Calgary YYC.

CTA has a new dashboard set up that tracks number of complaints per 100 flights for each airline. Foreign and domestic. Pretty interesting stuff.

https://otc-cta.gc.ca/air-travel-com...lights-airline

Flair and Swoop top the Canadian carrier charts. Not surprising. But what’s up with all the complaints with QR?

Ferry service is also suspended in Van. I'm glad my travel is done for the year. Last week was pushing it.

It is literally near the worst time of the year to find any capacity to travel domestically.

That being said, one would think Westjet would have the capacity. They have fancy, but currently underused 787s that could be used as to sub out a smaller plane on a Calgary-Toronto flight, which could be repurposed for recovery operations.

Unless they’ve a bunch of stuff stuck in Vancouver. That might be an issue.

Supposed to be above zero in Vancouver by Xmas Eve shouldn't be a problem by then at least.

Same here. Flew in from YUL to FLL last Friday, during the snowstorm in YUL. 5 hour delay, but I’ll take it. Upgraded to J class on our A333 with the new signature pods. Money well spent, considering I was in the plane for 5 hours.

I go back home only in mid-January.

Seems like YVR will be fine by the end of this week. Lots of flight delays though across the country, wow.

This makes no sense. YVR can't afford even one set of air stairs and a bus? When Trudeau arrives for his vacation at YVR, doesn't he have airstairs? It's not like he parks the 310 at Gate C34.

I think he usually flying into Victoria and then transfers to a smaller aircraft for the trip into Tofino airport. The military has a fancy terminal in Victoria.

That said pre-COVID Vancouver was using remote stands during peek period for both international and US flights. They have the stairs, busses and gates. We don't known if they have the people who are qualified to run all of that.

Maybe they think it's unsafe to disembark passengers with stair under this weather?

https://i.imgur.com/XyUfFB6.png

Flights suspension started around 9pm, and really become an issue just past midnight. Many planes loaded with passengers unable to depart and holding the gate for hours while waiting the snow to taper off. Arriving planes, or those attempt to return to gate, was unable to find a free gate to unload passengers.

Wonder if they changed the definition of "Heavy Snow" though? I rarely see that before, but I already saw it for the second time this year...