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A Regina man is calling the situation at the Calgary airport on Sunday “utter chaos.”
Evan Allary and his wife were on their way home from Cancun and when they landed in Calgary for their connecting flight to Regina, they found out it had been cancelled.
He said there wasn’t any explanation and at first, the only option was to wait three days for the next available flight.
“It was utter chaos, everybody running around trying to find bags and baggage claim and (saying) ‘Do we get rental cars? What’s going on? What’s happening?’ Nobody knew,” Allary said Tuesday.
They were told that if they needed a hotel room, the airline wouldn’t compensate them. Nor would it compensate them if they rented a car — which they couldn’t do anyway because there weren’t any available.
Allary and his wife were given food vouchers and then, about an hour and a half later, were told WestJet was sending passengers to Regina by bus. So they boarded the bus that travelled from the Calgary airport to the Regina airport.
Allary said it’s not the first time he has been on a bus and he knew what to expect.
“But the thing is, I paid for a flight. I paid for a flight to be home from Calgary to Regina in an hour and a half. I got stuck on a nine-hour bus ride with a 10-minute break in Medicine Hat,” he said.
Allary explained as an able-bodied person, he could handle being on the bus. What he’s calling unacceptable is that he was sitting beside a family whose son had a physical disability.
“They were on that bus with me for nine hours. Now that is totally unacceptable,” Allary said.
He also called the bus ride tiring because before the bus ride, he and his wife got off a six-hour flight from Cancun.
“You can’t get up, really,” he said of being on the bus. “You can’t move around. Well, you can, but it’s very limited and it’s frowned upon, of course, because you’re in transport mode.
“Basically, you’re trying to get some sleep but you can’t with the movement of the bus. They’re called a ‘bone-shaker’ for a reason. It was just a terrible, horrible experience.”
According to Allary, there hasn’t been any talk of compensation for his flight ticket.
“(WestJet officials) said they have met their end of the bargain by getting us home. They’ve taken care of that,” he said.
Allary explained that since he is a business owner, waiting three days for another flight was not an option for him.
“I went on a holiday expecting (to be away) a certain amount of time and to take another three days would really cut into anything I needed to do with my business,” he said. “It was just unacceptable and wasn’t what we were expecting.”
Allary also claimed the driver of the bus recently came off their minimum amount of hours off; the bus company called the driver at home and told them they were going to Regina.
“I thanked that bus driver for their availability because without them, we might not have had a choice in getting home. We might’ve been stuck there overnight or until Thursday,” he said.
Allary believes some of the Regina-bound passengers left the airport and made other arrangements for themselves.
Allary explained the experience makes him reluctant to fly with WestJet, but there’s not any other option since Air Canada no longer flies between Regina and Calgary.
“It kind of puts us between a bit of a rock and a hard place,” he said. “(WestJet) is our only option, really. Now, as a business owner, I see opportunity. If anybody has deeper pockets out there and wants to start a discount airline like WestJet was back in the ’90s, I think there’s opportunity there.”
