Her daughter only gets one week off work in the summer.
Although she made the reservation more than two months ago, Taliana says she only recently learned her daughter’s flight was canceled, a trend Canadians are all too familiar with.
“I haven’t seen my daughter in almost six years, so this is very painful,” Taliana told CTVNews.ca in an email.
Her story is similar to many shared with CTVNews.ca in recent days as canceled flights, delays and lost luggage throw a wrench into Canadians’ summer travel plans, in part due to a shortage of staff at Canadian airports.
Some report sleeping in airports due to cancellations and delays.  One person, flying from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island, said it took two canceled flights and an extra day to get home, while his luggage – filled with 70 frozen lobsters – took two days to arrive.
Responses were emailed to CTVNews.ca and not all have been independently verified.
Samantha Van Noy says she lost three pieces of luggage that, at the time she wrote to CTVNews.ca, hadn’t arrived in more than eight days.
Flying to Chicago for a trade show, Van Noy says her booth materials were in her luggage and the amount of money lost due to her airline’s “incompetence is incalculable.”
“I tell everyone not to fly unless you absolutely have to right now,” he said.
Kimberly Horton, a Canadian who lives in Austin, Texas, said she bought three tickets in February for herself, her husband and their son to fly to Toronto to visit family she hasn’t seen here and three years due to COVID-19.
“What was supposed to be a joyous celebration turned into heartbreak and disappointment,” Horton said.
She says the airline put her husband on standby because the flight was overbooked.
After calling customer service twice and being put on hold for an hour and 40 minutes, she says she was told there was nothing that could be done.
“My husband refused to board and my son was crying as we left,” she said.
After being asked to check her carry-on due to a lack of overhead space, Horton says her bag never showed up.
“It had all my valuables, medication, contact lenses, my son’s retainers, my Invisalign, etc.  Things you need and can’t replace on vacation,” he said.
She got her bag three days later.  Meanwhile, her husband was able to board another flight, only to be evacuated due to a fuel leak.
“That was the final tipping point for my husband. He was exhausted from everything and asked for his luggage back. They returned his bags with jet fuel and he went home canceling his holiday with us,” Horton said.

“PEARSON AIRPORT BRINGING OUT THE WORST IN PEOPLE NOW”

Oksana Klausmann had booked a trip from Toronto to New York for the end of June and says that after a long check-in process, she and her daughter went through customs only to discover they weren’t on the flight manifest, even though they had their boarding pass.
From there, he says they were taken to a small room filled with other families, children and the elderly, among others.
She described the room as not having enough seats for everyone, forcing some to sit on the floor, and a small toilet with no soap, toilet paper or paper towels.  Klausmann says there were no cups for the fountain.
Several hours later, they received an email saying their flight had been cancelled.  An agent then arrived with a couple of police officers confirming the situation.
“What happened next should never happen to my daughter and me. Turmoil, angry people, screaming, yelling, pushing and more,” she said.  “It was unsafe, scary, violent and hostile. I took my daughter and we tried to leave the room filled with more than 200 or 300 angry people.”
Having already booked a hotel and shows in New York, Klausmann says canceling the trip was not an option.
They found a flight on another airline that cost almost as much as the entire trip.  They went through another lengthy check-in process, but finally arrived in New York.
Once back at Toronto Pearson, after a long delay on the return flight, Klausmann says only 15 passengers were allowed off the plane at a time due to congestion at customs.
“Believe me people were not happy about that and some of them started to force themselves from the back of the plane to be in the front to get off the plane,” Klausman said.
The frustrations only continued as people began to wait for their luggage.
“Pearson Airport is bringing out the worst in people now, not everyone can stay calm in these conditions and they are putting other people at great risk,” he said.
“We, two Canadians, a daughter and a mom, going on a trip to have fun and enjoy time together, should never have had an experience like this. We paid for someone’s mistakes and lack of service with our own money that they could be used for different purposes’.
People sleep on a bench as they wait at Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport in Montreal, June 29, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ryan Remiorz

‘DEFEATED AND PURIFIED’

Lori Veltkamp had planned a three-week trip to Greece with her two daughters.  She bought her tickets in January and was scheduled to fly direct from Toronto to Athens in late June.
Expecting a busy scene at Pearson, she says she and her daughters arrived more than five hours before their departure time, but were put on hold and told to wait for their gate assignments.
Veltkamp says the flight experienced further delays due to delays in the plane’s meals.
She later said she was “devastated” to learn they wouldn’t be getting on the plane because they booked their flights through a third party and were “basically put at the bottom of the list to get out of standby.”
“We were rushed to a boarding gate bound for Venice, but would have an eight-hour layover in Venice before flying to Athens,” he said.
They managed to catch the layover flight in Venice.  But five days into their trip, Veltkamp says they still haven’t received their three suitcases.
“We are three people with no clothes basically and we had to buy new things. We hope to receive our luggage soon but we feel very defeated and discouraged by this whole experience,” he said.

CANCELED FLIGHTS AND GOOD FOR CHANGE

After canceling his flight from Prince George, B.C., to Toronto for July, Harmolk Brar said he was given the option to cancel the flight online for a refund.
By choosing this, he says the airline wanted to charge him $150 plus tax in penalties.
“A cancellation penalty for flights that have already cancelled,” he said.  “That’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard.”
Jamie Boulter and her husband had plans to fly from Moncton, NB, to Hamilton, Ont., in July for a few days.
He received an email saying their flight had been canceled and that they would receive a follow-up explaining how to get a refund or rebook, potentially flying to Toronto through the airline’s sister company, which he says would create more problems since booking a rental car in Hamilton.
Boulter said her only options were to rebook with the same airline for July 4, the day she was supposed to return to New Brunswick, or cancel.
She chose to cancel and was told her refund would be less than half of what she originally paid.  Boulter said she tried unsuccessfully to contact someone from the airline via phone, an online contact form and social media.
“I had paid for three nights in a hotel and it was non-refundable from the time I found out my flight was cancelled. I also paid for concert tickets for two shows, which were non-refundable,” he said.
“The concert was a two-night show of my favorite band, playing their entire first album on the 20th anniversary of this album, in their hometown. This experience would be huge for me. I am so soured by this experience.”
While Pearson has seen some of the worst travel experiences so far this year, Richard Vanderlubbe, director of the Association of Canadian Travel Agents and president of tripcentral.ca, says delays at larger airports can carry over to smaller ones.
“It’s one of those things that’s like a tightly wound drum head. There’s not a lot of slack in the system,” he told CTV News Channel on Saturday.
“If you have a pilot or a crew that calls in sick and people keep getting sick, the airline has to try to find a qualified pilot for that aircraft. And until they figure someone out, it’s a matter of switching pilots to different routes for this to happen and have less impact on connections.”
Ultimately, he says, it’s not much fun for the airlines either, which have to bear the cost of couriering lost luggage to people’s homes.
In response to “customer service deficiencies,” Air Canada announced last month that it would reduce flights in July and August.
An airline spokesman said it would reduce its schedule by an average of 154 flights a day for those two months, with the routes most affected being to and from Toronto and Montreal.
Before that, Air Canada operated about 1,000 flights a day.
Vanderlubbe said, while reasonable, Air Canada’s cuts will affect people’s future travel plans, possibly causing fares to rise.
“Hopefully as this develops, we’ll see less of it and by the time we get more into the summer and maybe Labor Day, hopefully it’s gone,” he said.
With files from CTV News