I keep trying to give WestJet my money, but they keep making it so difficult when my itinerary combines WS with either Delta or AeroMexico. Their “partner” airlines.

First, buying a ticket:

If you buy a WS+partner itinerary through WestJet, you can not buy premium or J on any segment. Your forced to buy Economy or nothing.

But if you buy the exact same itinerary from a WestJet partner airline (including a WS-operated segment) you have choice! They’ll sell you a ticket in whichever cabin you choose: an all Y itinerary, or an all PY/J itinerary. Including on the WS segments.

Or buy it through an OTA, and you also can buy the product you want. The only place where you can’t do that is if you buy from WestJet.

I try so hard to give WS my money that I even called the Platinum line when I couldn’t buy PY/J online — telling the Platinum agent exactly what I wanted. “No, no airline can sell you Premium or Business seats on another airline. You can only ever buy Economy when there’s more than one airline. Same with every airline.” she assured me — incorrectly. (Not really comforting when that misinformation is coming from a cream-of-the-crop Platinum agent… who are normally pretty good.)

Then, checking in:

On an interline/partner itinerary with Delta as the first carrier: check in with Delta, and you’ll get boarding passes for all segments, including WS segments. Without fail.

On an interline/partner itinerary with AeroMexico as the first carrier: check in with AM, and you’ll get boarding passes for all segments, including WS segments, without fail.


On an interline/partner itinerary with WestJet as the first carrier: Good luck. Try to check in with WS, and you’ll get an error message on the app. Try check-in via the website you’ll get a “you need to check in at the airport” message - with only a printable (not mobile) version of the first, WestJet-only boarding pass provided. But no BPs for your connecting flights. Then, the WS check-in agent at the airport will not be able to give you BPs either, and will tell you to go see the partner airline at the connecting airport, after you’ve arrived on your WestJet flight. (He told me - incorrectly - to go from my arriving aircraft straight to the D international gates at YVR. Can’t do that. You need a boarding pass to access those gates behind security, which WS couldn’t figure out how to give me.)

Even though it’s all on a single ticket, with all WestJet “partners”, and the agent can even see that I’m checked in for the entire trip … which I did via the WS website, apparently, in spite of the error messages. They just can’t give you boarding passes. So you need to run around and repeat the process with the partner airline during your connection. Meanwhile, all of the WS agents told me some version of “we should be able to give you boarding passes but we don’t know how”.

Argh. Hard to buy a ticket. Impossible to check in. And wrong information from WS employees about buying tickets and about checking in and about making a connection.

WestJet, why do you make it so difficult to be a customer?