WestJet customers complain about flight rebooking delays: ‘Just not right’

Thousands of WestJet customers had their flights cancelled amid an extreme cold snap in Alberta this month. Many say the airline would not reschedule within the required window.

On a frigid Saturday earlier this month, Mindy Watson learned that her family’s flight that day from Edmonton to Toronto, en route to Cuba, was cancelled.

WestJet offered to rebook their Varadero vacation on Sunday — not the following day, but eight days later on Jan. 21.

“My wife is Canadian military and needs to be back on base at CFB Comox on Jan. 22,” Watson said. Her daughter needed to clock into her nursing shift the same day, and another family member on the trip — a veteran with disabilities — had to be home for appointments.

One agent told her he was not allowed to book them on another airline, she said, adding that multiple representatives said the same.

They ended up scrapping the trip, a getaway the family had been looking forward to for months.

Watson was among thousands of WestJet customers whose flights were cancelled amid an extreme cold snap in Alberta earlier this month. And many say the airline would not reschedule them within the required window, in what one advocate framed as just the latest example of a failure to uphold travellers’ rights.

If a carrier has to call off a trip for reasons outside its control — severe weather, for example — Canada’s passenger rights charter requires it to rebook passengers on its own planes or those of a partner airline within 48 hours. If it can’t, it must put them on board “the next available flight that is operated by any carrier” to reach their destination.

The Canadian Press has spoken or emailed with more than two dozen passengers who say they were not rebooked within the prescribed time frame — many of them for WestJet trips scheduled this month, but others for flights over the past couple of years across several airlines.