Evacuating customers from areas in the path of the deadly Hurricane Irma has frustrated some passengers but Air Canada says it was perhaps the most complex manoeuvre since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"Where is my government for my boys and other Canadians?” a mother from the Greater Toronto Area told Global News.

Some 25 Canadian students of the American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine fled St. Maarten in time, but many of their peers weren't as lucky.