WINNIPEG – What should have been a routine flight home turned into a nightmare for one Winnipeg couple after their WestJet flight from Jamaica was cancelled.
Julia and Jordan Henry were visiting family in Jamaica when WestJet flight attendants walked off the job. The couple was supposed to fly home on Monday, Aug. 3, but their flight was cancelled.
Julia was 31 weeks pregnant and needed to get home.
An initial email from WestJet said the couple would be rebooked within two hours. But a day later, they still hadn’t heard anything.
After calling, emailing and trying to reach an agent, Julia finally got through, only to learn they would be stuck in Jamaica longer than expected.
“They were offering us either, I believe it was Friday (Aug. 7) and we wouldn’t get back to Winnipeg until almost Sunday (Aug. 9), and then another flight was we wouldn’t get home until the following Tuesday,” she said.
Henry said she was told by WestJet that they couldn’t be put on an earlier flight than the one they already had.
Receipts provided to CTV News show Henry asking WestJet about other options and being told there were no seats or flights available before the ones she was offered.
One interaction between Henry and the WestJet agent shows there was availability on an Air Canada flight, but since only “Business Class” was available, the WestJet agent told her they were unable to book those seats.
“Unfortunately, there are no seats available on those flights at this time,” an agent told her via a WestJet chatroom. “I am unable to accommodate the requested change based on the current availability.”
When she additionally asked about flying through the U.S. on different carriers, including Delta and United Airlines, the agent told them “unfortunately, there are no flights scheduled on the requested routing with the specified airline based on the inventory available in my system.”
However, Henry was able to find other flights on her own.
‘Bills are piling up’
The couple spent more than $4,500 booking their own flights, flying from Kingston, Jamaica, to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Aug. 6, and then taking a separate connecting flight that would bring them home to Winnipeg on Aug. 8.
However, Julia was not feeling well on Friday, Aug. 7, and admitted herself to the hospital. She went into premature labour, one day before their rebooked flight home, and gave birth to her daughter Keziah.
“It just escalated from one thing to the next and just so, so quickly, and it was like, nope, this is go time … our baby is coming now and she’s not going to wait,” she said.
Keziah is now in the NICU in Fort Lauderdale, where Julia and Jordan expect to remain for several more weeks.
Back in Winnipeg, Julia’s mother, Krista Fidler, is watching it all unfold thousands of kilometres away. She says the financial and emotional toll is mounting.
“Medical bills are piling up, and it’s not just the medical bills,” she said. “There’s bills for everything. There’s accommodation, there’s transportation, there’s the rental car, there’s food. There’s the stress of just being away from home.”
Fidler plans to travel to Fort Lauderdale next week to be with Julia and Jordan and meet her granddaughter for the first time.
She believes her daughter might still be pregnant if WestJet had gotten the couple home sooner.
“I believe in my heart of hearts that Julia would still be pregnant if she was home, and they would have got their flight home on Monday,” she said. “She’d still be pregnant, and things would just be normal right now, but right now we’re in a bit of a chaotic situation, with so much unknown.”
We reached out to WestJet regarding the allegations but have not received a response.
‘It’s caused a lot of stress’
Air Passenger Rights advocate Gabor Lukacs says WestJet’s decision not to find the Henrys an earlier flight is ‘reprehensible.’
“Telling passengers that there are no other flights, while in fact the passengers were able to book themselves on other flights, shows that WestJet was not candid, was not transparent with the passengers, and it was blatantly disregarding its legal obligations to remove the passengers on the next available flight on any carrier,” he said. “That’s what the Air Passenger Protection Regulations say, and that’s what WestJet was required to do.”
Lukacs says airline failures to rebook passengers on the next available flight are common.
“This is an ongoing and serious problem that has gone unaddressed because WestJet is doing it, and the federal regulator, the Canadian Transportation Agency (CTA), is doing preciously little about it,” he said. “What we see here is WestJet flagrantly disregarding the law, misleading the passengers about those flights not being available, and unfortunately in this case, the passengers are suffering the consequences.”
For Henry, the focus remains on her daughter, but she says she still wants answers from WestJet about what happened and why the couple couldn’t get home sooner.
“We’re in a situation where we’re not going home as of yet and it’s caused a lot of stress,” she said. “As of right now, WestJet has really disappointed us in how they’ve handled the situation.”
