Cancelled, delayed flights have families spending days at airports, spending thousands to get to destination

Beth Savage’s 14-year-old son left Sunday from Vancouver, en route to visit his grandparents in Fredericton.

But his first solo trip landed him in 20-hour lineups after his flight from Montreal to Fredericton was cancelled -- twice.

It’s become a very common story, especially in and out of Maritime airports that connect with Toronto’s Pearson or Montreal’s Trudeau.

“We’re at about, depending when you look, 18, 19 per cent cancellations for flights out of the smaller airports in Atlantic Canada,” says data engineer Ray Harris, who owns DataWazo, a strategic data agency.

“If you’re trying to get out of specifically New Brunswick or Charlottetown, you’re looking at almost a one in five chance of your flight being cancelled. And that hasn’t moved in three weeks.”

From over 4,500 kilometres away, Savage ended up having to find another travel option for her son.

He connected with a relative, and the family paid $1,333 for a rental car so they could make the drive to Fredericton. That’s after spending over $700 on a hotel so her son didn’t have to spend a second night on the airport floor.

An eight-hour trip ended up taking four days.

“I have got 43 emails from Air Canada in less than however many days,” she said. “With revised time, flight cancelled, revised time.”

She is now trying to find an alternate way to get her son home when the time comes.

“I don't feel like they care. They stranded a minor child in a non-English speaking province for three days without even as much as a food voucher,” she said.

Jennifer Macdougall left from Whitehorse, YT, on June 25 with her two children, ages 15 and seven, and her six-month-old baby.

They planned to travel to Sydney, N.S., with Air Canada to visit relatives, stopping over in Vancouver and Toronto on the way.

But a delay, two cancellations, two lost bags, five days -- many sleeping on airport floors -- and over $1,000 later, the family was still en route Wednesday after a friend picked them up in Halifax.

She was hoping to arrive in Sydney Wednesday night.

“It’s been an absolute nightmare,” she said in an interview with CTV News Channel. “There was people sleeping on the floor everywhere ... I ran out of diapers for my six-month-old so he had to sleep in the same diaper overnight because I had no way to access any stores or anything because it was too late when they cancelled my flight for me to go anywhere to get him diapers.”

In a statement, Air Canada said it operates about 1,000 flights a day system-wide, and the “vast, vast majority” do actually make it. But it acknowledges there continues to be problems plaguing the system.

“For example, if an aircraft is held at a gate longer than expected by customs or a flight is suddenly forced to cancel due to air traffic control-imposed limits on flying, that can affect the schedules of the ground staff servicing the aircraft and flight crews, whose duty day is regulated, and disrupt subsequent flights and movement of baggage,” the statement read.

“This is occurring even though we continue to hire and now have 32,000 employees, nearly our 2019 staffing level, and we are prudently operating 80 per cent of our 2019 summer schedule.”

The airline says it’s redeploying its Jetz charter fleet to transport delayed baggage.

The interim president of the Canadian Airports Council says these stories are certainly “not the experience we want for Canadian travellers or visitors to our country,” and while everyone is working on solutions, improvements are slow.”

“Once the system backs up, the delays cascade and it is very difficult to recover,” said Monette Pasher.

“There are still labour shortages across our aviation eco-system and ground service delays have been put in place at some airports by Canada's air navigation provider, which causes unforeseen impacts to airline schedules and has a cascading impact across the system.”

She says thousands of new employees are being trained – but that takes time.

Harris started tracking the data three weeks ago after his own flight was cancelled.

He says since then, there haven’t been any real improvements – and the Maritimes may be seeing the worst of it.

“I would caution that there doesn't seem to be an end in sight. And if you're wary of having travel plans right now, I, unfortunately, don't have any words of comfort,” he said.

Cancelled or delayed flights out of Maritime airports between June 22-29:

• Saint John: 25 per cent cancelled, 44 per cent delayed
• Moncton: 19 per cent cancelled, 43 per cent delayed
• Fredericton: 14 per cent cancelled, 42 per cent delayed
• Charlottetown: 14 per cent cancelled, 55 per cent delayed
• Halifax: 6 per cent cancelled, 36 per cent delayed

Source: DataWazo