Christmas nightmare at the Vancouver airport

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‘Nightmare before Christmas’: WestJet leaves couple with no bags, no hotel, no flights in Vancouver

All the Canadian staff must be busy holding doors open.

One more reason BC stands for "Bring Cash," because you're gonna need it..

Reminds me of the fiasco I had trying to get to Saskatoon in the Summer to go to a passport office appointment - had to book a few flights, no rental cars available in Edmonton had to book an expensive Turo car that I would have driven to Saskatoon and back.. but then I was able to get a booking for a local appointment when I told them what I had to do, which is good because my flight out of Abbotsford got cancelled that night!

IIRC, something crazy like 1/3 or 1/2 of flights in Canada have been delayed or cancelled over the last year - pilot/staff shortages. It's so bad that government has began legislating customer service minimums and what airlines must do for compensation when they mess up. Add in Christmas travel season and a rather rare for Vancouver severe Winter storm and it's the perfect s**t storm for everything to just go straight sideways.

Lack of de-icing crews isn't all that surprising.. job is in cold weather and from what I know of someone that did it pays $26/hr, which sounds like an Okay wage for fairly unskilled labour -> but this is Vancouver and everything is exorbitantly expensive so if anyone can get a higher wage doing anything else then they're not applying for or staying in that job simply because they need things like shelter and food and possibly to provide for dependants.

Not surprising there weren't any/enough counter staff. All the discount airlines run super lean - some with zero staff - the only way to contact them for any changes is via email or an app. Low payroll = how they have low (for Canada) airfare.


An acquaintance I've met a few times got stuck in Alberta without his Christmas luggage and after 2 days in the same pair of clothes messaged to borrow a few dollars for a change of clothes and some gifts for his niece/nephew/mom until he could be re-united with his luggage. (He borrows small amounts, always repays + a couple bucks so I saved his Christmas trip.) This is happening to people all over the country.

So many industries are SCREAMING for workers that simply aren't even applying. Airline, every construction trade, healthcare, film etc. I have no idea how we're going to hold our s**t together over the coming decades with my parents generation retired/retiring and so many people working keyboard jobs from home for tech companies or freelancing etc.. hands on jobs still need doing. Sure, we're slated to bring in 1/2 a Million immigrants/year.. but we can't even construct enough housing fast enough for the people that are here never mind to house them. What we gonna do? Teach igloo building and tell 'em to rough it while they build homes for Canadians on wait lists and try to sort s**t out at our airports? I dunno.

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No for supporting trump. Because doing so is deplorable.

Uhmm.. used to say Canada was a nice place to visit .. well perhaps not just now ??? Good Luck Canada ..
hope something comes out of this major learning experience for both the US and Canada.
possibly NOT the best time to travel just now. and all this at Christmas time.