joining me now is travel expert Jim buers Jim thanks as always for joining us and time now with this uh situation a lot of people try to figure out what to do next what can Travelers do in this situation well you know I mean you’re supposed to get uh uh you can always get a refund of course if your flight is canceled you know clearly you weren’t able to fly and it’s not your fault so uh refund should not be a problem down the road but that doesn’t help someone who’s trying to get out to Calgary to uh you know their lifelong trip to ban for get to a friend’s way in in California whatever it may be Roger so um there’s not a lot they can do at this point you know an airline is supposed to get someone rebooked on their own Airline within I think 48 hours but there aren’t any there’s no aircraft you know air uh WestJet is down to I think 30 aircraft out of you know several hundred maybe five or seven six or 700 aircraft that they’ve got in total so you’ve got only a small percentage of planes even available so it’s unlikely westjet’s going to get much have much space um you know most airlines are pretty packed these days so even if you wanted to get on an Air Canada flight or air North or whatever it may be a Porter Airlines you might not be able to do that so I think options for people are extremely limited and at this point I think you’re looking at kind of a lost weekend I’m afraid and it’s it’s hardworking now if you have to book on if you are one of the people that’s been had their flights cancel upwards of 50,000 now uh and you you buy a flight on a you buy a different flight and it cost you more can you go after WestJet for the difference in the flights or no you know the the I’m not an expert on all those little nuances of the laws I know the laws in Canada Rog aren’t anywhere near as strong as they are in Europe um you know European laws are are very strict about you know refunds within a couple of hours and and penalties that Airlines pay even if they’re only a few hours late I don’t think in any in this case I don’t believe I could be wrong but I don’t believe that consumers would be able to say oh West yet I had to spend another thousand on on a porter ticket or a transa ticket or what have you I don’t think that they are going to be covered for that sort of thing I I if they can get WestJet to pay for their hotel I would say good luck I’m not sure how that’s going to work for all of these people stranded but this is something that’s going to be going on for months and months if not years you last time I looked the uh uh you know the Canadian uh the Canadian group that looks after all of these Airline complaints was already backlog with thousands and thousands of complaints from covid now we’re going to be looking at a situation where they’re going to be doubling their work because of the WestJet strength and what do people do if they have flights booked for say next week uh with WestJet and they’re looking and thinking uh what do I can they canel or they want run the risk of losing their money on that you know that’s such a judgment call and and at this point I would certainly be looking for options I mean you you have to think that this has to end fairly soon I haven’t heard anything yet about uh when arbitration is going to restart or when arbitration will begin between the two sides it doesn’t appear that they’re talking it doesn’t appear that they have much in common at all right now so arbitration is going to take a considerable amount of time um and the clock is starting to take even for travel next week Calgary Stampede is supposed to start next Friday and I’m sure people people in Calgary are are already worried about that but in terms of you know whether you decide to to rebook or not um I think it would be wise I I wouldn’t necessarily count on on WestJet uh being available maybe by the end of the week but even if they would resolve this tomorrow uh it’s going to take them a while to get their planes up and running again you know you can’t just flick a switch and and get a whole Fleet of aircraft moving again and then of course all the when they do get it up and running they already have all those flights booked anyways they’ll Pro a lot of them are probably full because we’re smack dab in the middle of the summer absolutely so it’s going to be you know it’s going to be a mess that’s going to be going on for several days and um you know it’s it’s just it’s just heartbreaking you see these pictures of you know this little four-year-old boy who was supposed to be going to the Bahamas and he’s sitting on his suitcase and crying and you just think H it’s you know people going to Mexico people going to funerals people going to weddings um it’s a it’s a really tough time we haven’t seen this before I’ve been covering trouble for a long time in this country and I’ve never seen uh I’ve never seen this sort of a job action and it’s interesting even on social media Roger there are a lot of people blaming the airline there’s a lot of people blaming the union but a lot of people are supporting the Union as well so there’s a real division out there okay Jim thank you as always for your Insight any time Jim bars is our travel expert
Travel expert Jim Byers outlines how travellers are being impacted and what steps they should take.
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