Air Canada adds planes to schedule as stranded travellers grow impatient

[Bulldog]

By Melanie Patten, THE CANADIAN PRESS


HALIFAX - Gord Clarke took matters into his own hands when Air Canada told him flight delays caused by a massive storm meant he might be spending Christmas Day apart from the family in Newfoundland he hadn't seen in two months.

Still stuck at the airport in Montreal on early Monday, Clarke rented a car and started the 15-hour drive to the ferry terminal in North Sydney, N.S. He boarded the ferry to Newfoundland Tuesday.

His wife Tina said her husband had little choice but to make his own travel arrangements because of what she described as Air Canada's sluggish, post-storm response.

 

"Through the jigs and the reels, and waiting in lineup after lineup all night long with everybody else - I know he's not alone - he found out the flight had been cancelled and he'd probably be there until Dec. 26," she said in an interview from Corner Brook, N.L.

"Nobody knew what policy was supposed to be."

Gord Clarke, who was trying to fly from Edmonton to Deer Lake, N.L., was one of thousands of bleary-eyed travellers who found themselves stranded at airports Sunday after the blast of wintry weather crippled air travel in Central and Eastern Canada.

Delays and cancellations stretched into Tuesday, partly due to icy runways.

Peter Fitzpatrick, a spokesman for Air Canada, said it's possible some stranded passengers were initially given longer-than-normal wait times because the airline had not yet developed its contingency plan.

"You've got to wait until (the weather) clears before we can put a plan with extra planes or extra capacity," he said from Toronto.

"Between the time when it's stormy and when it ends ... the agents only have what's currently booked, planned and available. So looking at their computers during the storm, they would see the flights are pretty full because it's around Christmas."

Fitzpatrick said the airline eventually added a number of extra flights in a bid to eliminate the backlog of stranded passengers by Wednesday.

Tina Clarke said Provincial Airlines, which operates primarily within Newfoundland and Labrador, heard of her husband's plight and offered him a spot on a Montreal to Deer Lake flight.

But it was too late.

Her husband, who works as a crane operator in Fort McMurray, Alta., was already 40 minutes outside of Montreal in a rental car, and he had picked up a couple of passengers, too.

"(He met) two young men from Newfoundland," his wife said. "He said, 'I'm sorry, I can't go back. I've given these guys my word."'

Tina Clarke said the couple's two young children were happy to learn their father would be home for Christmas, but she said the ordeal with Air Canada has left her feeling bitter.

She said she's hoping the airline will reimburse the portion of the flight her husband never took.

The airline has policy that would allow for such a refund, said Fitzpatrick, though he could not comment on Clarke's case.

Peter Spurway, a spokesman with Halifax's Robert L. Stanfield International Airport, said airlines, including Air Canada and WestJet, had been working to take care of their passengers by adding extra flights.

"We don't have the small village that we had here yesterday, traffic is moving nicely," Spurway said Tuesday.

"If you didn't know we had the issues yesterday, you would come into the terminal and it's pretty much business as usual."

http://travel.canoe.ca/Travel/News/2007/12/18/4730841-cp.html