WestJet flight attendants may be back on the job after their union and the airline were able to come to terms on a new tentative agreement, ending their one-day strike. But the drawn-out battle between the two parties has still left countless Canadians far from home, with many of them stuck outside of Canada and trying to find a way back. According to aviation analytics firm Cirium, by Monday morning, WestJet had cancelled 922 flights between Saturday and Wednesday, with more than half (494) cancelled on Sunday and more than 300 cancelled on Monday. Manitoba family stuck in Iceland The Santos family from Manitoba were meant to have a quick layover in Iceland on their way back home to Canada. But after their initial flight out for Sunday was rebooked multiple times, they don’t have much hope they’ll be getting out of the island in the North Atlantic Ocean. “This is now the third time that our flight is being rescheduled,” Feliz Santos told CTV News in a Zoom interview with her husband Romind and their four children. “We didn’t have any accommodations because we were told so late in the day… and in here in Iceland… once they’re sold out, they’re sold out. You really don’t have very many choices," she said. “Thank goodness somebody on an Airbnb site replied to one of our emails and said that we could come in… We didn’t get into the Airbnb probably till 1 a.m. that night, so, it’s just been like a whirlwind," she said, adding booking the Airbnb in Iceland cost the family a lot more than they planned to spend. The couple says they were initially scheduled to fly out Sunday, but after WestJet kept putting them on different flights that extended their stay, they already had to pay thousands of more dollars for their unexpectedly extended vacation. “We had to keep all the receipts for fuel, food, and then even the car rental,” said Romind. “So, I think right now, as it stands, we’re adding another $4,000. You can’t really account for it, but you just kind of deal with it.” They say WestJet has verbally agreed to pay them $250 per night for hotels, but for a family of five in a place as expensive as Iceland, the couple says that won’t be enough. “They did say they would pay for [our accommodations] if it’s within good reason,” said Romind. “But Iceland is not within reason, it’s quite pricey here. So, even trying to find accommodations for one person for $250 in Iceland... that’s impossible,” she said, adding they’ve had to spend $3,500 for two rooms for the family of six so far for the additional two nights stay so far. Hamilton family trying to get out of Scotland Meanwhile, Alexander Peace, his wife Jessie and their two girls, find themselves in Edinburgh, Scotland longer than planned after their Sunday flight was cancelled. “I think that the handling of the situation hasn’t been very good and that communication has been particularly poor,” said Peace in a Zoom interview with CTV News Monday, adding that they have not been able to get any clarity from WestJet if they’ll be reimbursed for their additional costs, which add up to anywhere between $2,000 to $3,000. “WestJet has failed in their obligation to their customers, and I understand that labour disputes happen, but I think it wasn’t an excuse for completely bailing on any level of customer service. We haven’t had any communication from them, so we just don’t really know where we stand with them,” he added. Peace said after being held with WestJet customer service for hours, the family were given separate tickets to fly home on Monday. But when they arrived at the airport, the airlines told them they have no indication that WestJet ever put them on those flights. “It turned out that my wife and the two girls had been booked on a flight via Chicago, with United [Airlines], whereas I was scheduled with Aer Lingus via Dublin... So, we’d obviously been split up,” he said. “However, once we actually got to the airport, although we’d been booked – we hadn’t been issued tickets – so, once we visited those airlines [check-in desks], they actually had no knowledge that we were rebooked with them. So, we wasted a lot of time just kind of waiting around, talking to all those airlines.” Calgary couple cancel flight because of U.S. layover Calgary-based couple Patrick and Mariana Lucas were able to successfully rebook a flight back to Alberta from Guadalajara, Mexico through WestJet, but had to cancel their new rebooked flight themselves because they say WestJet put them on a trip that had a layover in San Francisco, California and Mariana is a Mexican national who needs a visitor’s visa to have a stopover in the U.S. “If you land in the U.S., you’ll get turned straight back around,” said Patrick Lucas in an interview with CTV News from Guadalajara. “When you [WestJet] just auto-rebook someone without maybe knowing what their limitations are for entering in countries, it makes a snowball effect of problems that lead out of it.” Patrick Lucas says they’ve tried to call WestJet multiple times to rebook via another country or a direct route to Canada, but every time they phone the airline, their call gets dropped. “For the first 48 hours or so, every call was getting dumped, you couldn’t get through to anyone. So, we had no choice but to just not show up for that flight,” added Patrick Lucas, who said they were still on hold with WestJet while they were doing the interview with CTV News. “It’s just disappointing,” said Mariana Lucas. “Even if we try [to rebook] on the web and the website, it is impossible to change it… And then we say, ‘maybe tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,’ but there’s no flight available.” They say WestJet should’ve thought and brought on more resources to deal with the surge of rebooking requests when the airline saw there may have been a potential for a strike. “They got to do better proactively,” said Patrick in his message to WestJet. “They knew that this [labour dispute] was going to come down to the wire, and there should have been steps put in place that if the strike happens – ‘okay, here’s what we’re going to do.’” “They’re hanging customers out to dry, is really what it feels like, and the expense then becomes on everyone else.” Passengers rights advocate Gabor Lukacs told CTV News Channel Monday, that if WestJet isn’t rebooking you within a few hours, go and pay for your own ticket back home and ask WestJet to pay for it. “Your first and foremost right is to get alternate transportation and if WestJet fails to rebook you within a couple of hours of the flight being cancelled, then it’s a sign that they’re not doing what they’re supposed to,” said Lukacs. “You are liberty to buy yourself a ticket and then charge that ticket to WestJet, make them pay for it. If they don’t pay it a judge will order them to pay it.”
