Jumper Jack

if you are not at the airport would it not be better to leverage credit card travel delay insurance?

zam

Most cc trip delay claims I've dealt with required submitting to the airline first.

Stranger

Never happened to me.

My belief was/is that the cc charges the airline if applicable.

Wigg

I would call the 50k line. If that was not successful I would just stay where I am and submit the receipt to AC. I am basing this from @canadiancow's experiences and posts.

There is no way I would be going to the airport unless that is where I wanted to stay.

vancouver25k

Which I may want to do in DEN for a 7:45 flight given the airport is like 4 hours out of town.

flyingcrooked

Right, okay, thanks everyone. She tried the 50k line as advised and this is what she sent me via WhatsApp after the call:

"The guy was totally useless but claimed that I could book any hotel and then send in receipt after. He didn’t know if they’d cover food and said ‘it’s worth a try!’ I was like - isn’t there a clear policy on this? He was like -- unfortunately not really. 😂🥴😵‍💫"

(Her 50k status is gifted and she doesn't fly AC much, can you tell?)

As vancouver25k noted, with an early flight she's planning to stay out by the airport anyway, so will head that way and book a hotel and file for reimbursement.

canadiancow

I appreciate that, but I have had absolutely zero experience trying to get a hotel anywhere but at a connection point.

If this happened to me at my destination, I wouldn't even involve the airline. I'd go straight to my credit card.

AC might reimburse, but trip delay insurance will.

flyingcrooked

Just to wrap this up (hopefully): Since she wanted to stay out at the airport anyway, she took the train out and, while there, thought she should at least ask the AC people about a voucher. I get these messages later:

17.37: "I’m at airport. Good news is they’re getting me a voucher. Bad news is I’ve been waiting an hour for it. But I’ve got work to do so it’s ok!"

18.37: "Omg. 1.5 hours later, they have no hotels. I say can I just get one and get reimbursed. ‘Yes’. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that 90 min ago’ ‘yeah sorry’."
18.38: "What a joke. Anyways it’s no bother. Have one now that has shuttle."

This is someone who, unlike me, is not quick to complain and is extremely even-tempered/unflappable. It's telling that in two interactions today with AC, on both occasions she came away thinking the AC reps were incompetent and unhelpful.

The positive for me in this is that she probably has a keener understanding of why my having SE status is important given how much I travel and the fact that even as a 50k, she can't get basic factual information about policy from the phone rep and has to wait 1.5 hrs to be told AC has no vouchers/hotel (I'm not even sure what that means).

kronos80

Could use a sanity check, cause I am having a brain fog moment this morning. but in typical AC fashion my YYZ flight to YYC later today was delayed twice due to a maintenance issue, so they say.

Anyways original dept was at 5:45pm, and is now sched for 7:30pm. I am assuming the airport arrival and bag drop off deadline would change to account for the new departure time and not the original times as displayed in the AC app. I was going to shift my arrival by an hour.

Sure enough, it was a nothing burger. I have done this many times, but this morning had a lapse.

msat

AC311 went tech and cancelled earlier today (May 12). Rebooked on AC2011 (same day dep), which subsequently got delayed 3 times only to finally be cancelled (also went tech). Told to book hotel and seek reimbursement from airline directly. No confirmation on which flight will be rebooked on tomorrow, but was told that international originating pax connecting onto flight are prioritized for rebooking onto other flights.

ffsim

I was in line with a couple pax from yesterday�s AC311 who are now on AC301, and it looks like AC2023 has been added later today, too. Quite the cascading mess caused by that cancellation, and it really ate into upgrade opportunities for this morning�s AC301. For most of the day yesterday it looked like there�d be room for 8-ish eUps, but it looks like only two cleared.

Heyden

Perhaps I have too charitable a view but don't regard the AC employees as being either incompetent or unhelpful. Last minute flight cancellations and delays are as unwelcome for them as they are for us. A day at the office goes from typical to having to contend with unhappy and often angry people and they don't keep a plane load of hotel vouchers on standby for every flight just in case there's a problem.

I learned long ago not to depend on staff from any airline, to solve my own problems and sort out the compensation issues after the fact. When overnight accommodation is required it's more important to have it than who will ultimately pay for it.

flyingcrooked

Yes, you are too charitable imo. I'm sure it sucks having to deal with angry customers, but that isn't relevant to whether (a) a phone rep answering a 50k line should know basic information about AC's obligations re providing a hotel when it cancels a flight, and (b) an AC CS rep at an airport shouldn't take 90 minutes to tell someone they have no hotel vouchers and the rep should tell a customer straightaway they can book a hotel and be reimbursed later if they anticipate more than a short delay providing a voucher or providing clarity on whether a voucher will be forthcoming. To be clear, fundamentally I'm criticizing AC here, not the employees qua people. AC should train and manage their employees better so they meet minimum competency standards for customer service.

stevendorechester

I don't blame individual employees but management needs to do a better job taking care their customers in cases like this.

The last time I had to overnight due to IROPs was in HKG and it took minutes for CX staff to issue us hotel vouchers and taxi coupons.

It's funny how the crews in these situations never have problems getting hotel rooms and are wished away in a matter of minutes; why can't stranded passengers get the same kind of pampering?

Heyden

I don't disagree but it is often better to take the initiative than to sit around waiting for them to do something and/or learning in advance what the procedures are when flights are disrupted at the last minute.

When my flight was cancelled at the last minute in early April I grabbed the first available AC employee walking by who told me passengers on the cancelled flight would be dealt with after passengers on a departing flight had been checked in, that they didn't have vouchers yet and had no idea when or even if they would come. I had been rebooked for the next day and not wanting to spend the next two hours waiting around I made by own arrangements and left. Receipts were submitted to Air Canada and I am being compensated for the cancelled flight.