Family Misses Flight & Spends $2k on Rebooking, but Who’s Really at Fault Here?
Ian MacDonald January 21, 2015
A family may be on the hook for thousands of dollars after they missed their cut-off time for a domestic Air Canada flight.
A Vancouver area family is out thousands of dollars after an incident with Air Canada in Montreal, according to report from NEWS1130. Earlier this month, Brianne Theberge, her husband, 10-week-old baby, and the family dog were traveling from Montreal-Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport (YUL) to Vancouver International Airport (YVR).
Theberge alleges that her family was not allowed to check-in online or at self-serve kiosks. News1130 reports the family arrived at YUL an hour and 45 minutes prior to departure and had no choice but to wait in a long line.
Despite allegedly receiving assurance from Air Canada agents that they would be fine, by the time the family reached the check in counter, they had missed the cut-off time for their flight. According to Theberge, she and her family were then sent to the ticket counter, where they were informed that they would have to wait two day for the next available flight to YVR. Finding this option unacceptable, the family booked a same-day flight on WestJet Airlines for around $2,000.
According to the Air Canada website, passengers traveling with a pet are not allowed to check-in online or at a self-server kiosk, they must see an agent. The website also stipulates that passengers traveling with a pet need to arrive a full 30 minutes prior to the recommend check-in time, which for domestic flight on Air Canada is 90 minutes prior to departure.
While it appears the family may have been a bit short of check-in time, Air Canada’s customer service department told NEWS1130 in an email that it is reviewing the incident. The YUL website, recommends passengers check-in for domestic flights three hours prior to departure.
[Photo: Aeroport Montreal-Trudeau Airport Facebook]
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IMHO: Family to blame for showing up late until AC rep stated no problem. At that moment blame shifts to the organisation. However, family re-booked themselves when AC offered to re-book. The family chose to spend money, the family lives with that choice. Also... why not just leave Fido at home / kennel / friends? Seriously, travelling with animals is ridiculous.
I've always thought cutoff times should be based on "you got into line XX minutes before your departure" thus putting the responsibility on the airline to staff adequately rather than the passenger being recommended to sacrifice an extra hour of their day 'just in case'. How many billions of dollars in productivity are lost by people getting to the airport an hour or two early 'just in case' the airline or security didn't staff adequately to deal with the demand at that hour?
Having checked pets at YUL recently I can say that my experience was that the check-in line was a complete clusterf*ck. I did get there more than two hours in advance, but it still took forever to get to the front of the line. The problem was that they were using that line and set of counters for pretty much anything that was out of the ordinary--rebookings, pets, etc. And not a single agent was in a hurry to get anything done. I felt badly for the people behind me as getting the dogs I was checking in sorted took a long long time and all because the agent kept insisting that one of the dogs wasn't allowed to fly because of his breed. This wasn't true (the agent couldn't understand the difference between "not recommended" and "not allowed"; as I had specifically called in the evening before to triple check that it would be ok to fly these dogs on that flight and been told that yes it would be fine, it was doubly annoying) and it took a supervisor to come over and sort it out. Thiat's YUL all over. The only real mistake the family made was to have any expectation that AC's employees would serve them in a timely manner.
I would not want to prioritize based on when your flight is either. I planned ahead and got their early so I don't have to be stressed out. If my flight is in 2 hours and people keep coming up in front of me with earlier flight times I am going to get quite upset quickly. Failure to plan on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part!
They should have specific check-in counters for specific flights. You can see them quite often in big airports. Usually for the national carrier at their national airports of course. That makes the lines less of a mess... Instead of having 6 counters open for any flights, have 2 for the next 3 departing ones.... something like that? Saw that quite often in different airports.