Originally Posted by
ac-YUL
The flights from today onwards have been re-scheduled to operate YYZ-EZE-SCL-EZE-YYZ for the foreseeable future, with the SCL portion only operated once permission to do so is granted by Chile.
AC094 will depart YYZ at 2345, arriving EZE at 1300, continuing to SCL (once allowed) at 1440 arriving at 1650.
AC095 will depart SCL at 1840, arriving in EZE at 2030, continuing to YYZ at 2210 arriving at 0730.
Obviously the situation is fluid, but this is the plan as of now.
This is welcome news. ^
My wife's sister's mother-in-law (I'll call her Mrs. X) is stranded in SCL. (That might sound like a distant relative but not so distant in our family...she is, after all, the dearly loved grandmother to several of my nieces and nephews and they are worried sick about her)
She was flying ASU-SCL-YYZ-YWG, departed ASU on Friday...no problem to SCL, but as was noted upthread, the SCL-YYZ leg was canceled Friday night due to mechanical issues. Air Canada put her in a hotel which was damaged during the earthquake that struck early Saturday (when Mrs. X was supposed to be en route to Toronto).
Mrs X is 67 years old with limited mobility. She can walk but generally requests wheelchair assistance due to recent health problems. She was visiting family in Paraguay.
Mrs. X could not be reached on Saturday but her travel agent in Winnipeg was able to contact Air Canada, which confirmed that Mrs. X had survived the earthquake. Attempts to reach Canadian officials in Ottawa and Santiago were fruitless.
Mrs. X was permitted to place a telephone call to her husband at 3:30 in the morning Winnipeg time on Sunday and told him that "they" (it was unclear who "they" referred to) would only let her speak two minutes. She reported that while she was okay, the hotel had been damaged and she and other hotel guests were "sleeping under the bushes outside". Most of the other AC passengers were in other hotels.
Mrs. X called again this morning and said that her passport--which had been confiscated at the airport since she had no Chilean visa, having planned only to connect there--had been returned and that the airline was "holding a meeting" this afternoon. Perhaps the above news will be relayed, but with (by now) hundreds of backlogged passengers we shall how soon Mrs. X actually manages to depart SCL. (We don't know if she is still sleeping outside...she has had limited opportunities to communicate with us)
So we are keeping our fingers crossed that this fragile woman survives this and that she makes it home to Winnipeg in a timely manner. Obviously these are extraordinary circumstances.