Caroline Reignier and her boyfriend Stuart Spunt should be enjoying a 10-day vacation in San Diego.
Instead, they’re at their home in the West Island, shaking their heads about what happened to them five days ago.
The couple say they were set to fly to California last Thursday at 6 p.m. for a relative’s wedding and a family reunion.
But the they say the flight was delayed seven times until it was cancelled, five hours later.
“Finally at 11 p.m. they cancelled our flight,” said Reignier. “They gave us no information, they just told us to pick up our bags at carousel 1, 3 or 5.”
The couple say they looked for their bags for over two hours until they realized they weren’t there.
“Some of the (other) passengers actually had air tags on their luggage,” said Reignier. “They’re the ones that found out that our luggage was in Miami, on another plane.”
What’s worse is the couple claims their flight was never rebooked.
Not only do they want their luggage back, but they also want to be compensated, even though they say much of what they’ve lost from this experience is irreplaceable.
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“It’s been five years since I’ve seen my immediate family,” said Spunt. “It’s the only immediate family that I have … so to say that I’m hurt, I’m devastated by it.”
In a statement, Air Canada told Global News that “airport operations were halted for safety reasons, and air traffic control initiatives further affected flights at our Montreal global hub” after the city was impacted by severe thunderstorms last Thursday.
“Following these events, Air Canada’s focus was to get aircraft and crew back on track and get our customers on their way as soon as possible that evening and the next day. We regret to hear about the delayed baggage and our baggage teams continue to be in contact with the customer to reunite the bags.”
Air passenger rights advocate Gábor Lukács says it sounds like there were multiple breaches of the law in the couple’s experience, and they should be compensated.
But he says the biggest issue is the failure to rebook the passengers on another flight.
“We do know that delays, cancellations happen from time to time, but to leave the passengers with no transportation, that’s unacceptable,” he said.
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