National Post (National Edition)
AIRLINES BRACE FOR CHAOS AS THOUSANDS FIND THEMSELVES STRANDED.
Thousands of passengers delayed, stranded
Aaron Oram, his wife, sister, a niece and a nephew had just landed from Florida when the news popped up on his phone.
Their connecting flight from Toronto to St. John’s, N.L. — said the Air Canada text — had been cancelled, a victim of Ottawa’s decision to ground the nation’s Boeing 737 Max planes.
Things soon got worse. After queuing for two hours, Oram’s family was finally scheduled on a new flight — one that wouldn’t leave until the same time Thursday. And the hotel rooms they had to book in the meantime would be on their dime, not Air Canada’s.
“I’m 100 per cent for safety. I feel relieved they are pulling down the flights,” the Glovertown, N.L., resident said in an interview from Toronto’s Pearson airport. “(But) I said ‘This is not my fault, not the weather’s fault. It’s their equipment that got pulled down from the sky. If they bought from Airbus, we wouldn’t be in a hotel right now.’ ”
Oram wasn’t alone in feeling frustrated.
Thousands of Canadian passengers saw their travel plans thrown into disarray Wednesday as the country’s two biggest carriers scrambled to cope with Transport Canada’s grounding of over three dozen Boeing 737 Max planes.
Air Canada and Westjet customers who suddenly discovered their flights would not be taking off joined long lines at airport counters or called travel agents in search of alternative rides. They could be difficult to find on a busy week — March break for millions of Ontario students. Some whose planes were grounded Wednesday would not fly until Friday, said WestJet.
Even hotels were booking fast around Pearson, Canada’s busiest airport, said Oram.
The two airlines said they were trying to transfer passengers onto other flights, putting larger planes on routes served until Wednesday by the 737 Max jets, and moving some people to other carriers as a stopgap measure.
The companies have two of the world’s biggest fleets of the Boeing model — which
YOU CANNOT JUST PULL OUT AIRCRAFT FROM THIN AIR.
was involved in two major crashes in five months — but stressed that the planes represented a relatively small fraction of their total operation. Air Canada typically has 75 flights per day on its 24 737 Max aircraft, out of 1,600 daily flights and a fleet of 400 planes.
Still, those grounded jets ferry 9,000 to 12,000 people daily, said Peter Fitzpatrick, an Air Canada spokesman. Passengers will not be charged to cancel or rebook flights, but should expect delays in doing so, he warned.
“We appreciate our customers’ patience,” he said.
Westjet — which has 13 of the planes — said 1,000 “guests” had been affected Wednesday, with half rebooked on flights the same day, also at no extra charge. The others would be sent on their way Thursday or Friday, the airline said.
“Please recognize that this is a very fluid situation and we are working to minimize the number of guests impacted,” Westjet said in a question-and-answer list posted on its website.
The grounded planes represent less than 10 per cent of its fleet of over 170 jets, the company said.
Among the measures taken by Air Canada to handle the government decision was to put wide-bodied airliners on its flights to Hawaii instead of the 737 MAX.
The airlines should not be expected to cover passengers’ extra costs — like hotel stays or meals — for the next couple of days, given the sudden government decision, said Gabor Lukacs, founder of the group Air Passenger Rights.
But if similar delays persist later than, say, Friday night, they ought to cover those expenses, he argued.
“You cannot just pull out aircraft from thin air,” Lukacs said. “But past this point … airlines will have to pull out all stops to find aircraft from other sources. They cannot just sit around and do nothing.”
The Flight Centre travel agency is hearing from many customers trying to book new trips, and expects to be handling such calls at least for the next few days, said spokeswoman Allison Wallace.
“Due to the sheer volume of people affected, most people will be facing delays,” she said. “Finding space on the next available flight is particularly challenging given it’s a peak travel period.”
Families returning from March-break getaways will have few options, given the limited number of already crowded flights from some of those destinations, she noted.
Oram and his family had just come off a two-week break in Orlando, Fla., but he thinks their interrupted homecoming could have gone more smoothly.
“It’s just frustrating how the agents kept saying ‘It’s not Air Canada’s fault — it’s the government’s,’ ” he said. “He compared it to a recall on a car. I feel like they could have handled it more respectfully.”