Flair cancelling flights to California, Florida

Flair cancels flights to Florida, California Customers are upset after the discount airline cancelled flights without notice. CTV Edmonton’s Dan Grummett reports.

A mom who gave her 14-year-old daughter the best Christmas present ever—a family trip to Las Vegas to see her favourite band with a best friend—is frustrated Flair Airlines cancelled their flights without more notice than an email.

St. Albert resident Riva Mackenzie was notified by email on Tuesday that her family’s March 21 flights from Edmonton to Las Vegas were cancelled.

The message from Flair reads, in part: “We regret to advise you that due to changes in our schedule, your upcoming flights on the attached itinerary have been cancelled.

“We apologize for the inconvenience.”

The email continued to inform Mackenzie she would be refunded and offered a $50 travel voucher per person for another Flair flight.

“You trust these businesses. You give them your money,” Mackenzie said. “They would sue me if I didn’t pay them… They broke their contract.”

Mackenzie wasn’t the only Flair customer upset with the company this week. Other upset customers took to social media to complain about cancelled flights to Palm Springs, Calif., and Phoenix, Ariz.

Another customer CTV News spoke to said she didn’t even receive an email notification.

On Wednesday, Shannon Bailer went to check the flight status for her March 9 trip to Phoenix-Mesa.

“First thing I pulled up… cancelled,” she recalled.

When she called, the company told her only her flight to Arizona was cancelled, and that her flight home was fine.

“I was like OK, what does that mean? ‘Well, we'll refund you for the flight there’...and that was it.”

Flair Airlines first said on Twitter operational reasons had resulted in “unforeseen schedule changes.”

The company later told CTV News some service would be suspended starting Feb. 28 and that passengers were currently being contacted.

"We entered an agreement with a third party airline to provide services to some U.S. destinations to allow our people the time to train and prepare for the addition of our new aircraft type, the Boeing 737-800NG," wrote a company spokesperson.

They added the agreement was "challenged by several external factors and disappointing load factors"—or low ridership.

All flights to Miami, St. Pete-Clearwater, Fla., and Palm Springs have been suspended.

Flights to Las Vegas and Phoenix-Mesa will continue to be offered from Edmonton and Winnipeg with a reduction in service. Flights to Orlando will only be offered from Winnipeg in the future.

Mackenzie said she re-booked—at a few extra hundred dollars—her flights with Swoop, but that the situation has left her with a terrible impression of the company.

She told CTV News she spoke to four different employees on Tuesday in an attempt to find out what happened and how she could be compensated, and was told she would be rescheduled on the March 22 flight.

When she called back Wednesday, she says she was told there were no more seats.

“I was really livid, because that’s not how you should treat people,” she said.

It is unknown how many customers have been affected.

The founder of a Canadian air passenger rights advocacy group said Flair’s actions were wrong.

“Contracts are contracts, a deal is a deal,” Gábor Lukács said.

“An airline cannot just walk away from its obligation to transport passengers.”

On Feb. 13, the company announced a visual rebrand to mark its expansion: since opening, Flair’s staff has grown by 20 per cent to 300 employees, it has moved into the Edmonton International Airport, and introduced new international routes and fleet aircraft.

“Our fares are as much about competing with the great Canadian couch as with the ‘big two’ and the new look we are about to introduce will make us even harder to ignore,” the announcement read.

However, that may not be the case for two disgruntled customers.

“If I can support local anytime I will, but in this case, it’s kind of hard,” Bailer told CTV News.

Mackenzie said: “Never again. You get what you pay for, I guess.”

With files from Dan Grummett