Adam Smith

Maybe you should read my first post, which started out by saying it was likely a screw-up by AC and then commented on the excessive emotional angle of the story.

BRAISKI

Same after reading it I was like WTH, this dude is pansy!

I can just see him sulking in the corner and sending her lots to text messages that he missed and love her, taking selfies, video messages.

Grog

When did you say it?

You clearly dismissed both the location and the lack of hotel room. If you take a small step back and look at the totality of the thread, yes, you acknowledge AC's screw-up, but you dismiss 24 hours of diversion as simply inconvenient and frustrating, and most people would say it's a bit more than that if you're not even given an hotel room (meaning you might not be reimbursed for it without a protracted fight for it).

OccasionalFlyerPerson

Maybe in the future they'll be able to plug people's brains back into the computer and give disgruntled passengers back the feelings and emotional things that they missed out on.

quantumofforce

yes, I see that now, my apologies.

Diabeetus

Qingyan Liu even provided a sad emo selfie for CBC to share.

He seems like the kid in school who would call his teacher, "mommy", and got beaten up, and then his older brothers would also get beaten up, by the younger kids, when he would get his older brothers to help.

smallmj

I agree with most of the posters here, even when they have trouble agreeing with each other.

(1) AC messed up. They rerouted him to another city with an unexpected overnight. AC should have paid for a hotel.

(2) If some customers with Chinese names have trouble entering their name correctly (as simpleflyer suggested), then AC needs to fix the system to make it clearer and easier. If the system is too euro-centric then something is wrong.

(3) The part about being separated from his girlfriend is a red herring. The emotional turmoil is irrelevant unless one of them was acting as a caregiver for the other. If it was so important that they stay together then she should have waited for him instead of boarding the airplane.

Northern Canuck

Do you know for a fact that this guy does not have mental health issues?

mapleg

Liu said he's flown all over the world and has never had an experience like he did this weekend. "This is definitely the worst experience I've had."

Seems like he is not handling it well. Millions of passengers per day get to their destinations without issue, yet this is the story that makes then news.

And, I wish my lucky stars that something like that would be "the worst experience I've had".

24left

Correction. It made The CBC News.

It is not on Global. It is not on CTV, who seems to think the bigger story is the family kicked off JetBlue because of a cake is more newsy-news.

Haven't checked to see if it's made the BBC, Bloomberg, WSJ, NYT and such.

Northern Canuck

Since Liu (刘) has travelled the world I am sure he knows how to enter his name for ticket purchase. If there was an error on the ticket why was it not caught at check-in since he has to provide his proof of identity at that stage? If there was an error, the gate agent corrected it but not until after his seat had been given to someone else, perhaps a higher paying passenger. "He said an Air Canada employee was able to fix the issue, but then told him the plane was full and he'd been bumped off the flight to Saskatoon." I didn't know gate agents could "fix" identity issues.
Even AC agrees that this is unusual. AC suggests you arrive 90 minutes before departure for an intra Canada flight. Check-in closes 45 minutes before departure. He checked in 60 minutes before departure.
He was IDB'd, his seat should have been held until the issue was corrected since it was a correctable issue.

flyquiet

The problem is that CBC cannot understand that 1 and 2 are the stories. However, apparently J school teaches reporters to pander to cheap sentiment, so 3 becomes the headline and hook of the story. I think the flyer's experience would not receive half the disparagement here and possibly elsewhere if it hadn't included the boo-hoo-miss-my-bae angle. I wonder why girlfriend did not switch to the same itinerary as him. At least they could have been shelterless at YYC together, which seems to meet the needs alluded to in the headline.

yulred

Lots of "I am man, hear me roar" going on today.

Guy gets bumped off a flight, sent to a different city and not provided a hotel room, but it's not okay for him to point out how this very oddly managed situation caused some emotional distress?

Won't even bother with the apparent belief that only going to Somalia warrants distress. That's just intellectual laziness, but at least it's a stab at intellect.

RCyyz

Indeed. People feel how they feel. Some folks react quite emotionally to almost any situation. Though reacting emotionally rarely helps, it's not an invalid response.

I don't think it's a great secret that I generally question the "need" to bump pax at all. But if it does happen, I do think the airline should step up and pay for whatever comes after. In this case, the pax was owed compensation and I think, a hotel room. If AC had bumped the pax but taken care of him, this would not have been a story.

LondonElite

What a baby. I agree a hotel room would have been appropriate though.

Must be a slow news day at the CBC.