Alberta lobster fest foiled by 18-hour Air Canada delay
EDMONTON — A northern Alberta woman wants Air Canada to issue an apology after her 145-pound lobster shipment from a Newfoundland seafood company arrived a day late, much of it spoiled as a result of the delay.
Jenny Warrick, a well operator from the remote community of Cotillion, located about 175 kilometres north of Grande Prairie, says one quarter of the 100 live lobsters she ordered had gone bad by the time the shipment arrived. The shipment arrived almost 18 hours after the lobster festival she organized ended.
Warrick and her sister, Jackie Panasiuk, say Air Canada’s cargo tracking system indicated their shipment reached the Grande Prairie airport around 4 p.m. on Aug. 13.
Once at the airport, Warrick said she was told by an Air Canada representative that the shipment hadn’t arrived and “the tracking doesn’t always work.”
Panasiuk, who drove from Stony Plain to attend the event, called Air Canada customer support while her sister turned around to head back to the community, emptyhanded for the 7 p.m. event.
On the phone for almost three hours intermittently, Panasiuk said she was treated badly by the agent, who told her severe weather had grounded the flight in Toronto, but couldn’t confirm if the shipment would reach Alberta that day.
“There were so many things that we could have done to mitigate this, but Air Canada just left us in the dark,“Panasiuk said of the agent’s refusal to move the cargo onto another carrier.
In an email to Postmedia, Air Canada spokeswoman Isabelle Arthur said the company cannot transfer shipments to another airline unless it is pre-approved and pre-booked, which “has to be done in advance and cannot be a last minute solution.”
Air Canada also determined cargo agents “did their very best to assist them in getting their shipment as soon as possible” by reviewing phone recordings, Arthur said.
The shipment was grounded in Toronto because of “very bad weather” and was sent on the first available flight the next day, said Arthur adding that a “complex itinerary such as this with connections and subsequent changes makes it challenging to provide real-time tracking information for technical and operational reasons.”
Around 10 a.m. the next day, the seafood arrived in Grande Prairie. The lobsters were quickly cooked up, frozen and distributed to any remaining guests for free.
After adding up the costs, Warrick says she spent more than $3,000 out of pocket and was in the process of refunding ticket money from event.
The sisters submitted a damages claim Wednesday to Air Canada, hoping to at least have their costs reimbursed.
Arthur said it takes up to a week to handle claims and that the company does “regret not having been able to meet” the sisters’ expectations.
Although last year’s event went off without a hitch, Warrick said she will not be organizing another lobster fest.
“It was stressful all night trying to deal with it,” she said. “I know a lot of the community people will miss it.”