tryinginvain

I’m hoping to get some guidance on how to proceed. I’ll outline the situation:

This involves my friend Tina who came to PVR to visit for a week. On Feb 20 she was on 989 from YOW-YYC connecting to 2246 to PVR. Fairly tight connection that wasn’t helped when they had to wait about 20 minutes for a gate to clear. There were about 10 people connecting to PVR and were assured their flight would be held. When they got to the gate for 2246 they had closed the door. Tina said the flight sat on the tarmac for a while before leaving. According to the Westjet site 989 arrived at 10:15 and 2245 departed at 11:20.

Westjet told her they would not book her on another carrier. The best they would do was get her to YWG later that night and then to PVR the next morning. The second best option was 24 hrs to wait for the flight the next day. They refused to provide a hotel or even food vouchers. They claimed it was weather related and kept telling her it was due to de-icing. Some others were given hotel rooms. When she mentioned this to a manager the response was “they shouldn’t have been given rooms”. As she was there all day she spoke to several people at Westjet and always got the same response. At one point she was actually told they couldn’t hold the PVR flight because it wouldn’t be allowed to land if it was late!

Her trip here took 30 hrs. I’ve been fortunate enough to never have to fight for compensation and I rarely fly Westjet. Can anyone suggest the best way to proceed? What do you think is acceptable compensation? Her return flights were not an issue.

FlyerJ

I'm probably going to be an outlier here, because - although this type of stuff happens regularly - I've never asked for compensation from an airline. (This situation has happened to me on other airlines, but not on WestJet.) Do a travel insurance claim.

My POV: [mod edit] happens. Always. Especially when travelling, and double that when connecting anywhere. Expect it, be ready to pivot, and be ready to take care of yourself. And that's also why I'm a fan of travel insurance.

When I've had weather-related missed connections, I've always just booked my own hotel and paid for it myself. (Mostly because I'd rather fork out a bit of my own money to stay in a decent place close to the airport rather than the typical distant low-end places that airlines use. Also because, when airlines start handing out vouchers, it's typically chaos getting an airport shuttle bus, then getting to a hotel and finding a huge line, and then 'maybe' getting a room.) I've often had that covered by the insurance built in on my credit card, but also by separate travel insurance that I purchase for some trips.

Seeing the connection sitting on the tarmac, having just missed the doors closing? Been there, done that. Super frustrating. And I've expressed that frustration to airline staff, when the airline should have known that X number of people from the same inbound flight are trying to make that same connection. I totally get the frustration. But, yes, I know there are operational issues at many airports (customs, landing slots, scheduling of ground service providers) that any airline needs to factor in when they decide whether or not to hold a plane. Or it could have been that the return flight from PVR to YYC had dozens of passengers with tight connections, and holding the inbound would have had an even bigger ripple effect. Regardless, it just adds insult to injury when you sprint to the connecting gate and see the plane there ... but can't board.

Having said all that, as much as I love WestJet, I think WestJet struggles at IRROPS compared to other airlines. Could they have done something to avoid this situation? Maybe. Maybe their clunky systems didn't signal the need to hold the flight. Or maybe it was really critical that they push back on time. Who knows. If the delay was due to icing, well, isn't that probability factored into a winter schedule? Or was there an extraordinary issue here. Again, who knows. Would it hurt them to offer some goodwill ... heck, even just compensation in the form of WestJet dollars that encourages a repeat purchase? I think so, but - again - maybe there's more to the story.

Symmetre

I agree with FlyerJ 100%.

The primary reason I hold premium credit cards is because of the enhanced travel insurance they provide. Sometimes things do go sideways, and the reasons why don't matter when you're stuck someplace and simply need a room for the night. Relying on the airline to take care of you is always a gamble, so I prefer the certainty of knowing I can just make a quick call, get a room somewhere close and decent, and know it will all be dealt with by the CC company.

By all means take it up with Westjet and see what they have to say. But for future, strongly consider booking travel on a premium card that will provide insurance against these kinds of potential problems. Or, purchase trio insurance ahead of the flight. IMHO it's a small cost for the tremendous peace of mind it can provide.

LondonElite

I can’t really add anything but this is a very odd routing. Ottawa to Puerto Vallarta via Calgary? Was there nothing easier available? Was this one ticket?

tryinginvain

I’ve flown enough to have had a few bad experiences that I also just rolled with. I understand it’s part of doing a fair bit of travel, and I hold premium cards with travel insurance. But, Tina does not fly that often. She doesn’t have premium cards or Nexus.

She had one weeks vacation and lost an entire day due to Westjet not doing what they should have IMHO. Her flight left YOW at 7 am and she was due to arrive in PVR about 4:30 pm. As I helped her find the flight, there were no other options at a price that worked with her budget. Having flown to PVR from YOW a few times I don’t find it a bad routing at all. Yes it was one ticket!

• They didn’t hold the connecting flight when they clearly should have.
• They refused to route her to PVR on other carriers that would have gotten her there the same day.
• They listed “weather” as the reason for problems that weren’t weather related.
• They would not give her a hotel room when they gave them to select other passengers.
• They would not even give her food vouchers.
• She arrived in PVR 20 hours late.

I feel as if they repeatedly dropped the ball and should compensate her. I was just hoping for a bit of guidance as to how she should proceed.

cedric

Perhaps her travel patterns aren't conducive to the annual fee charged by a premium credit card, but that doesn't preclude anyone from purchasing individual trip insurance. Particularly on a tight connection to a destination that that is only served 1x daily. You state that Westjet "clearly should have" held the connecting flight, but I would never expect that to happen as a regular traveler. I've certainly never seen a Condition of Carriage that claims that connections will be held for delays regardless of cause, nor have I seen Westjet advertise such. I suspect that most other carriers wouldn't have handled this situation any differently other than if the delay reason was coded differently. And that's why travel insurance either individually or via a credit card is so useful.

tryinginvain

Over an hour between when the 1st flight landed and the 2nd departed. And I’ve been on many flights that were held for connecting passengers on the same airline. Whether it’s a condition or not it’s certainly been common practice in my experience, especially when it’s only a few minutes. Often myself and others have been met at a gate and rushed directly to a connecting flight.

At any rate, it seems pretty pointless to talk about what she could have/should have done.

LondonElite

Your expectations of what WestJet (or most other carriers) can and will do is much too high. This is a textbook case for travel insurance relief.

Adam Smith

@tryinginvain, you should take a look at APPR regarding delays, as that's the applicable regulation.

What other carriers could have gotten her there that day? With the current crappy flight schedules, I'm not sure whether there's any other carrier that could have gotten her there that day.

If your friend missed a flight that departed at 11:20, it was likely at least 11:30 before she got to talk to a WS rep about fixing her situation. Re-booking on another carrier would likely require ticketing before the check-in cut-off, which would probably be 45 minutes or an hour.

Looking at the list of arrivals at PVR that day, I don't see any flights that your friend could have caught, given that she couldn't have departed YYC any earlier than ~12:30.

(Keep in mind that APPR only requires carriers to re-book on carriers with which they have an agreement. WS and AC don't have an interline agreement, so AC wouldn't be included. That being said, there are no AC flights that would have fit the bill here either) That, or blaming it on uncontrollable safety reasons, seems to be WS's (and AC's) way of getting out of paying under APPR.

If this was a controllable delay, then APPR should dictate WS should have taken better care of her.

She should file an APPR claim with WestJet, after she/you do a bit of research on what she should have been entitled to.

Please drop this line of reasoning. We would all like to have flights wait for us when we're connecting, but you don't know how many connecting pax there were, or what other factors there may have been - need to beat weather that was rolling in somewhere along the route, crew duty hours, checked bags (your friend may have been at the gate, but if she and others had checked bags, that could have added significantly to the wait), etc.

If you make this the crux of your argument, you will be distracting from the factors that are in your favour. Those are:

• Tina was delayed 20 hours, including a forced overnight
• The delay was controllable by WestJet
• APPR says WS was required to give her:
  • Food and drink (delay >2 hours)
  • Free hotel (forced overnight)
  • $1000 compensation (delay >9 hours)
• WS failed to comply with its obligations under APPR

The process is that you submit a complaint to WestJet (stick to the facts), and if you don't receive a satisfactory reply, you can escalate it to the regulator. It's all laid out in the page I linked above.

tryinginvain

I’ve been in PVR all winter and picked several people at the airport. There’s are a lot of flights from the US and MEX so I assumed they could have re-routed same day her but I did not check. When I heard all this that day she told me they would not put her on another airline so I didn’t see the point in looking for flights.

As a side note, she booked her return with Aeroplan points on UA. Flight delays ruined those flights on the day she was supposed to leave and UA immediately re-routed her back to YOW on Westjet and gave her a food voucher. It was handled quite differently, agreements or not.

It seemed clear to me they were trying to blame weather to avoid their responsibilities as well. The part I found confusing is they repeatedly told Tina “de-icing”. I thought de-icing was an everyday thing in the winter months?

Thank you very much for the suggestions. I will tell her to do exactly as you suggested!

LondonElite

Well, I don't think we can give you any more advice. My suggestion would be to have Tina send her hotel and food outlays to WestJet and see what happens. I suspect nothing. Therefore I think Tina should also claim this with her travel insurance, noting that she has not had a reply from WestJet, if that is the case.

aerobod

Re-routing through 3rd countries at the moment can be problematic. US pre-clearance would require a valid negative Covid test from the previous 24 hours (or valid proof of recovery from Covid), whereas Mexico currently has no entry test requirement. WestJet (or any other airline) would not be able to board a traveller transiting the US who doesn't present a valid negative Covid test or proof of recovery from Covid in the previous 90 days.

Adam Smith

Did WS flat-out refuse to re-book her on other airlines, or did the rep look up what was available and indicate they wouldn't re-book on another carrier because there wasn't anything better? I'm hesitant to pass judgement given that not only was I not there, but you also weren't there.

Here is the list of all the flights that arrived at PVR that night (in spoiler tags below). The Swoop flight departed YYJ at 13:45 local, and there was no way to get from YYC to YYJ in time to catch that flight, so definitely no way to catch anything else earlier. And I highly doubt there was any way to fly YYC-xxx-MEX in time to catch a flight that left there ~21:30 local, although I haven't put in the work to confirm that.

So I could easily see a WS agent quickly tapping their computer and seeing nothing better than the itinerary they put her on, and that being miscommunicated to or misunderstood by your friend as being unwilling to book her on another airline. Although I could also see a surly agent refusing to look at alternate options. Given that this one is probably not in your favour (even if they didn't look, I don't think there were any better options), I would just omit it from your compliant to WS and stick to the facts that are in your favour.

cedric

If the initial delay was a result of needing to de-ice, then it's no wonder Westjet coded the delay as weather.

tryinginvain

That’s a very good point, hadn’t considered that.

True, I wasn’t there. She said she asked about another airline and they said no, they could not do that. But something could have been missed.

From my understanding the flight was on time landing at YYC until they had to wait about 20 minutes for a gate to clear. That’s not “weather” to me!

Whatever happens I’ll come back and update this thread. Of course that might take a while.