weekend of grounded passengers on a lot of WestJet flights, the airline blames bad weather, but one air passenger advocate says there are bigger problems. Danina Falkenberg brings us this report.Extremely cold weather in Calgary caused airline passengers big headaches when it came to travel plans, since Friday and over the weekend.
Minus 30-dgree temperatures cancelled a lot of flight including the one Reinaldo Fagundez’s parents planned to take home from holidays in Ontario.
They were left stuck in Winnipeg with a cancelled flight back to Calgary.
ADVERTISEMENTOnce they got off the plane, there was nobody at the gate,” he told CityNews. “They had a difficult time finding somebody like a WestJet representative to whom they could speak when they finally got a hold of somebody this person did not know anything about what was happening, what was going to happen.”
Fagundez says he understands that weather can delay a flight, but he feels his parents were completely abandoned.
He thinks there is a lack of social responsibility and empathy.
“My mom was asking, in terms of help, ‘Okay, what do I do now? Am I going to get my luggage back?’ And they didn’t even know if they were going to release their luggage to them,” Fagundez said. “All they were repeating to them, ‘You’ve got to wait for a text message or email, that’s all we can tell you. We don’t know anything else.’”WestJet has been disobeying the law and that’s another issue from my perspective is somewhat more interesting than the weather issue, because weather happens once in awhile, but what this stress test has brought to the forefront to the surface is that WestJet has been systematically disobeying the law with respect to it’s obligation to rebook passengers on its competitors,” Lukacs said.
In a statement, WestJet does say weather is to blame for the impacts to flights over the weekend.
On Saturday, the airline said that “temperatures rendered de-icing fluid ineffective” in a number of cities, including Calgary.
On Monday, the airline said that as weather improves, regular operations are expected to resume Tuesday.