Originally Posted by
Fiordland
But the advantage of have a contractor is they have a larger local pool of people that they can move around between different duties to meet demand and adjust for things like vacation and sickness.
If they can't staff all the positions to run a flight, all they need to do is a get one or two people in at check in to handle rebooking passengers onto Air Canada, Porter or PAL. That at least lets them meet their commitment to their customer to get them to their destination.
SA is short staffed in about every base and especially in the larger bases it's the revolving door issue. Don't pay enough or have any benefits so people leave after a month once they see the abuse isn't worth it. Majority don't even have RAIC's.
Contract agents and most regular WestJet CSA's aren't JFS trained so rebooking onto other carriers isn't an option. Usually only WestJet leads or computer strong agents were trained because of a few booking mishaps. I remember one being someone rebooking a Y passenger into a J seat on Air Canada somewhere in YVR to Japan. Air Canada sent the bill which tighten who gets access and who doesn't. Rebooking itself onto WestJet flights isn't even in the training program laid out to the contractors. This is supposed to be handled by WestJet Reservations Support Desk but a few of them have picked up on it thankfully.
It's a shame because in this instance, WestJet employees could've been flown in and covered or helped out. Done it before when a coworker death happened or some other major event.
Personally having worked as front line for WestJet I don't believe the whole "staff shortage" is caused by Omicron. Also as far as inflight, they still have nearly 400 flight attendants in YYZ and and 300 flight attendants in YYC that aren't recalled. The issue isn't demand, the issue is the training department is bare bones and can't retrain them fast enough.