Ontario couple recall 'trip from hell' after WestJet loses luggage
A retired couple’s trip from London, Ont., to Kelowna, B.C., to visit family and do a little skiing turned into a “trip from hell” with multiple delays and lost luggage on both the outbound and homeward journeys, they say.
Donald Payne, 76, and his wife, Jutta, 75, had booked flights on WestJet, leaving London on Dec. 17 with a connecting flight in Calgary to Kelowna.
“We departed London, Ont., on Dec. 17th on WS0747 on time at 20:10,” Jutta, a retired secondary school teacher, said in an email to National Post. So far, so good. But from that point on, everything seemed to go wrong.
First, multiple flights from Calgary were cancelled due to severe weather, after the interaction of two powerful weather systems caused one of the biggest winter storms western Canada had seen in years.
“Passengers with connections wandered aimlessly through departure halls at Calgary Airport because all info desks in the halls were unlit and unoccupied,” said Jutta.
Sure enough, theirs was one such cancelled flight. But as Donald, a retired printing company president, told National Post, they were told they wouldn’t be getting lodging or meal tickets, as airlines don’t have to provide these things for weather-related delays . But also, no one at the gate knew where their luggage was.
“So we phoned 15 different hotels,” he said. “We finally got a Comfort Inn at two in the morning, and they had a shuttle bus back and forth.”
Jutta added: “We slept in our clothes, had no toiletries, and were worried sick about our luggage containing Christmas presents.”
Back at the airport later that morning, they still couldn’t find their luggage. Donald said that when they went to the baggage claim, an employee there told them she couldn’t help. WestJet has told National Post that some of its airport staff are in fact “trusted third‑party partners.”
“Then my wife said, ‘My husband’s heart medicine is in the bags.’ Her answer back was, ‘Well, then you should go to emergency.’ Before I could say a word, my wife saw our bags in the pile of hundreds of bags, because she’s got a very bright bag. We got a cart, walked over, got our three bags, then went over and got my skis, and walked out. Nobody stopped us. Nobody said a word to us.
After two nights at the Comfort Inn and another at the Airport Radisson, running up costs of almost $900, the Paynes finally made it to Kelowna on Dec. 20. “I have a seven-year-old granddaughter there that I skied a lot with,” Donald said. “We had a ball.”
But then came the trip home.
“We were scheduled to return to London, Ont., on January 1st on WS208 at 19:55,” Jutta said. “We waited in the departure lounge for four hours due to a creeping delay that was not weather related.”
They had another connection in Calgary, and Donald asked if they could be moved to an earlier flight. “The agent said there were empty seats on that flight but he was not a WestJet employee and did not have the authority to rebook passengers. He suggested we call the 1-800 number but said, ‘You won’t get through!'”
Sure enough, the couple didn’t make it to Calgary that day. The Paynes said the airline bumped them and others from the Kelowna-to-Calgary flight and failed to rebook them. A spokesperson for WestJet told National Post that, because the Paynes were travelling “during our peak winter travel period,” re-accommodation was limited. “The Paynes were re-accommodated on the next available flight,” they added.
Donald said he called the airline and spent an hour and 48 minutes on hold before reaching an agent, who briefly assumed they had already made it to Calgary. “She says, ‘Well, no, you’re in Calgary.’ And I said, ‘No, I’m still in Kelowna.’ She says, ‘No, you’re in Calgary.'”
Once everyone agreed where the Paynes were, he suggested the airline book them on an Air Canada flight instead. “The woman on the phone, she said, ‘No, we’ve used up our Air Canada allotment.’ And I said: ‘But there’s empty seats on this flight.’ She says, ‘No, I can’t do that.'”
Donald then suggested a Tuesday flight with WestJet that had room in priority seating, which they had originally paid for. The agent countered with a Monday flight in economy. Donald said she told him: “It’s either this or nothing.”
And so the Paynes spent another three days getting home, this time with no luggage, which had successfully made the trip back without them. “We didn’t have to pay for lodgings, but we had to go buy clothes because our baggage was God only knows where,” said Donald. “We had to buy toiletries, etc., etc., to get by for three days.”
In addition to their accommodation costs on the way out, the Paynes calculated they spent $793.77 at Shoppers Drug Mart, Winners, on walking shoes and for food during their second delay.
“WestJet acknowledged the difference between economy and priority, and are crediting back that,” Donald said. “As for the delay, it was mechanical so they automatically owe you $1,000 each, because it was more than nine hours. Not that they ever got ahold of us. We got ahold of them, and the costs — well, my wife has put in a claim, but she has had no response yet from WestJet.” (Airlines have 30 days to respond to claims.)
Donald had also noted that no one he spoke to at the WestJet gates or counters were employees of the airline. “WestJet works alongside trusted third‑party partners across our network, including Kelowna, to support in‑destination operations,” a spokesperson told National Post.
Donald added: “We’ve been flying that airline since it started, because we go out west a lot for family and so on, and I could never fly it again.”
He also noted that they were less inconvenienced than others might have been in their predicament. “That’s one of the things I’m thinking about, is people without means,” he said. “We have the means to get a hotel room, we have the means to buy food. It’s not going to hurt us, but people who are on a budget … people that scrape together the money to go out and see their family or whatever, they don’t have that kind of money.”
Jutta kept extensive notes on the experience. “We arrived on time in London, Ont. on the morning of January 5th and our luggage was waiting for us,” they conclude. “Even here we had to demand to see a supervisor to claim our luggage.
“The agent at check-in had told us she couldn’t help us.”
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