gcashin

Agreed, all airlines are subject to IRROPS, and AC definitely has their share of them at YYZ. The difference is that AC seems to get back on their feet much more quickly. I've had dozens of IRROPS situations on both WS and AC; AC often has major problems, but generally gets you where you're going within 24 hours. When WS runs into problems, it can take days to recover.

Definitely agree; there are decent chances of misconnects when connecting via AC, especially out of YYC. But when WS runs into IRROPS, there's a real risk of having the trip cancelled entirely or getting stuck somewhere for days while they try to recover.

FlyerJ

I'm certainly not a WS apologist ... but, in fairness, this was a pretty unique and operationally-devastating weather situation that they had to deal with. They had 4 consecutive days of weather severely impacting their biggest hub and numerous destinations near that hub -- 4 days where fuelling systems wouldn't work, de-icing wouldn't work, bridges froze up, ground crew capacity was limited, etc. They were absolutely hammered by awful conditions that lasted for days on end.

Then, on top of that, Friday Jan 12 saw another of their major airports (YYZ) hit with weather that required a bunch of incoming flights to divert to a different airports. So on top of dealing with their deep freeze in YYC and the prairies, they also had to recover from their fleet (and hundreds of passengers) being in the wrong places in Ontario thanks to a separate, 'regular' winter storm.

I've been stuck in my share of IRROPS -- AC for weather at YYZ, UA in an icestorm at IAH, DL in an IT meltdown at MSP. In all of those experiences, the airline had maybe 12 to 24 hours of battling a single problem. They all got on their feet more quickly because the problem could be resolved more quickly. In this situation, WS was faced with a 4 day event hitting their mega-hub compounded by a 'regular' winter storm hitting a second key airport.

I absolutely get the anger in this thread (like I said, luck was on my side that I wasn't impacted) and by no means am I trying to minimize what people had to go through. But, operationally, I really have no idea what WestJet could have done to prevent this. (In terms of customer communication, yes. But operationally, no.)

YVR Cockroach

Extreme cold isn't exactly unusual and its effects known, and was predicted. Contingencies could have been put in place. More agents at call centres for one, more ramp workers so they can be rotated in and out to warm up. Who knows if there will be long-term damage, or if customers will stay loyal because it's a "western" outfit (sort of like loyalty to Shaw Cable vs. Telus despite how unreliable and spotty the former's internet service can be).

FlyerJ

A post from a user named "hollywoodcory" on the YYC forum on Skyscraperpage.com:

I'm not sure how they could have staffed up to have a relevant number of additional (temporary??) ramp workers to have changed anything, particularly when the biggest issues were planes being frozen shut, fuelling systems being frozen and inoperable, bridges freezing up and going out of commission, etc, etc. Short of putting a massive roof over YYC, YEG and YLW and heating the tarmacs, seriously, what could they have done to prevent those issues?

Throwing a bunch of temps onto the tarmac to try to operate inoperable equipment wouldn't have helped.

Heck, even if was just one type of equipment that went inoperable ... there might be a single root cause pointing to a solution and a way of preventing this from happening again. But the problems hit equipment belonging to the airport authorities (i.e. bridges) and to the ground handlers (loading belts, tugs) and the de-icing contractors (de-icing fluid that wouldn't de-ice) and, heck, even the doors on WestJet's own aircraft.

It's easy to say 'contingencies could have been in place' ... but, realistically, what could have been done?

gcashin

Living in YYC, I take no exception to the extremely challenging circumstances as far as outdoor operations and fully acknowledge that they needed to cancel flights given the reduced capacity. The issue I have is more related to communication, poor IT, unreachable CS, an unclear and inaccessible travel waiver, and they seem to have lost track of crew to get flights back on track quickly. People were left with cancelled flights and no rebooking options, on hold for hours trying to get an agent trying to cancel or rebook, or unable to even get through. What could they do:

• Their travel waiver was issued far too late, was unclear on what it covered. Issue a clear waiver that actually works (i.e. change flights up to X date, keeping same origin/destination with no change fee or fare difference).
• Self-service tools that actually work to let people cancel/rebook flights, including reflecting the travel waiver (i.e. let people move to alternate flight within date range with no fare difference). A lot of the call center backlog seems to be driven by basic changes that should be able to be done online
• Unreachable CS; need basic features like a reliable callback system, ability to staff up call capacity during IRROPS
• Leverage airport staff at outstations to help customers rebook

Absolutely no criticism for the folks working outdoor operations who went above and beyond in exceptional circumstances. The issue is the customer facing aspects outside the aircraft (airport, call center, IT) where things completely fell apart.

FlyerJ

That would be fantastic, but…

If I recall, there are no WestJet staff at any “outstations” any longer. All but a handful of their primary airports are now “staffed” by outsourced ground handling companies for only basic check-in agent and gate agent functions.

I doubt WS even has the ability to use those people for remote IRROPS support, because when they’re not doing WestJet check-in and gate functions (scheduled only around timing of WS departures) those same contractors are swapping out their WS uniforms for another airline’s uniform to go stand behind that other airline’s desk. And my hunch is that they’re only trained to a very basic level on each airline they work for; probably not good enough to handle challenging IRROPS rebooking (and tense customer) situations.

Few airlines have any slack - ie extra people - anywhere in their systems. WS probably takes that even further than most…

cedric

Sure, but that's purely a Westjet decision. They decided to build the network with very few redundancies.

FlyerJ

All fair points.

One thing that has often puzzled me is WestJet's phone system.

I'm lucky in that - as a Platinum - I usually get pretty quick access to an agent. But, when the agent answers, they start a sloooooow process of figuring out who I am, asking me more questions to verify that, and then figuring out why I'm calling.

Please, resist your urge to cringe as I suggest this. In addition to other things, they need a much better, modern phone system that can do all of that automatically before connecting callers to an agent. I'm not saying they go with an old-school "our menu options have changed, press 1 for x press 2 for y press 3 for z" system -- those are awful and outdated and really don't help. And I'm not suggesting that this should be in place of truly useful self-serve options on the web or their app.

But if they could acquire and implement a system that could - in a customer-friendly way - figure out who I am and why I'm calling, they could shave minutes off of every call. And therefore they could handle more calls. Or have agents already 'briefed' and prepped when a requested callback is finally connected. And, frankly, make calls a little less frustrating if I didn't have to answer the same questions each and every time.

Would it increase their CS capacity such that phones would be answered immediately and customers dealt with right away during IRROPS? No, of course not. But would it still increase their call capacity? Yep. And could it (if done correctly) make for a way better customer experience? Yep.

Check out this video ... cutting-edge AI powered phone systems that, they say, are used by many airlines Super interesting:

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/how-ar...-call-centers/

tracon

Looks like WS has cancelled all their mainline flights from YVR after 20:30 tonight because of the snow.

YVR Cockroach

Would cost too much. Suspect Schwartz & Co. want to get as much cash flow out of WS in the short-term to recover their investment and/or boot earnings to prep WS for a sale.

FlyerJ

Well, this is one of the pillars of the new CEO's strategy for WestJet:

It would seem that they haven't done much on that front yet -- at least nothing that's visible to us customers.

YVR Cockroach

When was this? Takes to to select, implement and train. If it's 1-2 years ago, I can see it being in process (but surely there'll be an announcement somewhere by either WS or the vendor) or otherwise empty rhetoric?

VoodooYYC

I agree with this 100%. Since day 1, or at least over the past 15 years, WestJet has been an airline that operates daily on pretty much zero cushion or capability to absorb IRROP events. Sunny day in June, but 3 aircraft go mechanical or AOG, and it’s chaos. It’s just who they are…fleet utilization is really high, there’s no spare capacity available. And there’s no cushion of extra staff to bring in to deal with weather events like this week, because outside of their core airports, they have contracted all CSAs out, and pretty much all ground handling is now contracted.

Comparing how they handle the weather to how AC does isn’t really fair. AC is a huge operation, with lots of extra capacity. Westjet cancels 4 YYC-YYZ flights, and it will take 4-5 days to clear the backlog, whereas AC runs 2 extra wide body sections, and problem solved.

Not making excuses for them, just saying that as a consumer, you kind of need to know these things going in. If you really have to get there, you need to have a backup plan.

YVR Cockroach

I did a mileage-reviving run and one of the stops was in YYC. At least on (or because it was) a Saturday early afternoon, WS didn't appear run on a high-utilisation/quick turn-around basis like WN. Lots of 737s sitting at gates for extended periods (as in all of my 1 1/2 hr layover) which I was really surprised by. There are also the WR DH4 fleet which seems to have an even lower utilization rate (I understand WS doesn't know what to do with them) - the one that took me to YLW (stayed parked for over 3 hrs). Very different from the WS I first experienced in '97.