Travellers trying to get home for the holidays or to see friends and loved ones are experiencing long waits at Vancouver’s airport Tuesday due to heavy snow and bitterly cold temperatures.
Garrett Forster arrived from Calgary at 12:30 a.m. on WestJet and was stuck on the tarmac for at least seven hours, waiting to deplane.
“No real sense of direction, not really sure what’s going on,” he told Global News Tuesday morning. “And we’re getting pretty restless right now, just trying to get a sense of direction and trying to figure out, you know, what are we going to get off this plane?”
Forster said the crew had been bringing drinks but passengers had been offered very little food.
“I just feel like it was a colossal mishap in terms of, you know, managing the resources, planning effectively,” he said.
“Especially being from Canada, I just think it’s something completely unacceptable to what happened to Canadians during this time of the year.”
In a statement to Global News, WestJet said it understands “the frustration and disappointment this has caused and our teams are working to re-accommodate guests as quickly as possible.”
“The ongoing extreme cold weather warnings affecting Alberta and prolonged forecasted snow and weather events for regions across B.C. inclusive of, Vancouver Island, the Lower Mainland and the Okanagan are having a severe impact not only on our operations, but our staff and service partners who are battling frigid temperatures and extreme weather to uphold our operation,” WestJet said.
“At Vancouver International Airport specifically, the weather prevented many of our staff and service partners from being able to get to work yesterday evening and into this morning.”
Sanad Aridah has been trying to travel to Los Angeles to see his family for the holidays.
He said he knew something was wrong when passengers were only starting to board their flight Monday at 8 p.m. and that was when they were supposed to be taking off.
“We got on the plane, they closed the doors and then we got a push notification on board saying the flight was cancelled before we got to the flight path,” he said.
The pilot then confirmed the flight had been cancelled and they went back to the gate and people started to disembark.
Halfway down the walkway, Aridah said someone from Air Canada told them the flight wasn’t cancelled, it was only delayed.
“So we got back on the plane. We pushed back. And as the aircraft starts making its way to the runway, it just came to a stop from then,” he said.
Aridah sat on the flight for at least 10 hours.
“I’m pretty shocked at YVR’s preparedness for something like this,” he said. “Particularly because we kind of knew this weather condition was coming about a week in advance.”
He added that staff seem mostly focused on keeping the aircraft’s engines on.
“Basically, YVR is just a parking lot right now,” Aridah said.
“The de-icing machines have no fluid in them.”
He said they have been given granola bars and water but that is it.
“The staff members here have been wonderful,” he said. “I feel bad for them. They’re stuck here with us. So really, all they’re prepped for is the pretzels and some water and juice, but we haven’t really had a meal since about 5 p.m.”
In a statement last issued at 1:20 p.m., Vancouver airport staff said the winter storm had an “unprecedented impact on flights, affecting operations at YVR, with mass cancellations overnight.”
While a small number of flights have been able to depart, cancellations and delays will persist for the majority of scheduled flights, the airport said in the statement.
Staff are working to provide food, water, and any other needed assistance to passengers throughout the terminal buildings.
While it isn’t currently snowing at the airport, de-icing operations will continue to be necessary.
“We recognize the impact this has had on travellers. We are incredibly grateful for their patience as well as the professionalism of flight crews as ground teams continue to work to get people off aircraft as soon as is safely possible,” the statement continued.
Staff are asking everyone to stay away from the airport unless they absolutely need to come.
In an unprecedented move, staff at the airport have been making grocery runs to Costco to hand out food and water to people waiting in the terminal.
Lines are reportedly at least a mile long inside the airport and some kiosks and food vendors are closed.
Aleksandra Kovacevic flew into Vancouver from Kitchener-Waterloo on Flair Airlines and landed around 10:30 p.m. Monday.
She was still on the aircraft when Global News spoke to her around 6 a.m. Tuesday.
“When we landed, the first thing (the pilot) said was it’s going to be a few minutes for them to figure it out. And then we waited about an hour, and then after an hour they were like, ‘Oh, there’s a lot of planes piled up.’ Just different excuses every time. And the pilot would come on the speaker, like every hour, just telling us a different story and just saying like ‘a few more minutes’ beginning the next few more minutes.”
Kovacevic said everyone on the plane has been asking what is going on but no one has any information.
She said there is no food and many people were getting desperate.
“Just honestly, like, nobody is helping at all,” she said. “And we have no answers. We’re still, like, just sitting here.”
On Tuesday, Air Passenger Rights Canada’s independent nonprofit consumer advocacy group for air travellers, filed its report with the House of Commons Transport Committee on the Air Passenger Protection Regulations.
The report shows that Canada’s air passenger protection regime is unnecessarily complex, creates barriers to access to justice for passengers, and does not offer adequate protection to Canadians, according to the organization.
Air Passenger Rights’s report urges harmonization with the European Union’s passenger protection regime. The full report is available online.
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