The Covid-19 pandemic made the distance between immigrants living in Canada and their loved ones in their home countries seem all the longer. Empty airports, travel restrictions and Zoom calls became the norm. Christmas 2022 was set to be a welcome return to normal, with people eager to visit family and friends they had not seen for years. Sadly, a rare winter weather event left thousands stranded in Vancouver, forcing them to make alternative holiday plans.
Rebecca Moore described her journey home to Ireland last Christmas as “horrific”. Heavy snow and freezing temperatures caused chaos at YVR Airport, with many people vowing never to endure similar stress next Christmas. She urged others to book flights well before the Yuletide season, a difficult task to master with limited annual leave. She shares her experience of long lines, delays and crossing international borders with Immigrant Muse.
She says, “I booked flights from Vancouver to Toronto to Dublin. The first flight was leaving on December 22 at 11:45 am and was due to land in Dublin at 8:30 am on December 23. There were no messages about delays until the morning of my flight which I had expected. I received an email saying that my flight was delayed by 45 minutes. Anyway, I got to the airport at 7 am in case there were long lines, but all that was pretty quick. I was at my gate when my flight was delayed for a few hours. What was supposed to be a flight boarding at 11 am ended up not boarding until 2:30 pm. We were on the plane and were supposed to take off at 3pm. We were then delayed a further hour and a half on the tarmac and didn’t take off until almost 5pm due to one of the machines for loading baggage being broken.”
Rebecca hoped that her luck would change, once she landed in Toronto airport. Sadly, this was not the case. She recalls, “our plane from Vancouver landed at 11:35pm meaning we missed our connecting flight by ten minutes. Instead of holding the plane and letting us de-board we stayed on the tarmac for a further 40 minutes after landing. Once we got into Toronto airport, there was no one there to help with missed connections or anything. I asked one random airport employee that I saw and he said to go to the Air Canada help-desk in departures. I joined the helpdesk line at 12:15am, which moved painfully slow because there was only one person at the desk. Then at 1:30am, the woman at the desk announced that she was finished her shift and there would be someone back at 4am.”
At this point, the Irishwoman had given up all hope of getting home to her family for the holidays. She explains, “I had no idea if I was even getting a flight home or not. They let us sit and wait in line until 4am and another woman came over to tell us we had all been queueing in the wrong area and we had to go somewhere else, line up for the customer service phones and just try to get someone there. There was not a single person to help us rebook our flights, so we had to do it over the phone.
“I waited in line for another hour while people tried to get through to the line. There were eight phones and you had to dial a three-digit number, listen to the automated message, get cut off and repeat the process until someone picked up. One of us would get through to someone every 40 minutes or so. At 5am, more people started getting through so they must have had a lot of staff starting at that time.
“I got through when someone else handed the phone over to me when they were done, with the operator staying on the line. The operator was helpful and booked me on the next Air Canada flight out of Toronto, which was at 9pm on December 23.” The young woman was shocked to learn that no compensation or food vouchers were being handed out considering the flight wasn’t for another 16 hours but was just eager to leave the airport.
She continues, “I went back to the Air Canada desk straight away to check in. I did buy an apple air tag so I could see that my bag was in Toronto airport which gave me hope at least. I went through security then and was basically just sitting at the departure gates from just after 6am to 9pm. I ate a little but I didn’t sleep at all. There was a snowstorm in Toronto too but that only delayed my flight home by like an hour and a half. We eventually boarded near 11pm and took off for home. I landed in Dublin at about 10:30am on Christmas Eve. I was 50 hours without sleep at this point.
“It will be my last time going home for Christmas because I cannot go through that again,” she resolves.
Colm O’Mahony was not as lucky and had no choice but to stay in Vancouver, when a series of delays left him stranded. He says, “my experience was pretty typical to everyone else’s. I was due to flight out December 22 but got notified of my cancellation the day before. The flight was rescheduled for the 23 but I got another cancellation within minutes of getting the notice of rescheduling. I was only meant to be going home for a week so I stayed in Vancouver. It was pretty difficult. Town here kinda clears out of people at Christmas time. It was one of those situations where I just had to accept what was out of control and make the best of it. I really want to make it home next Christmas and make up for last year!”
Fellow Irishman Ollie Wood was one of the many that had to find alternative transport across the Canadian/US border. He recalls, “we arrived to the bus station to be told by staff that buses were running yet they had already been cancelled. Somehow, staff didn’t know even though there were windows on the bus windows saying that they were cancelled. I then convinced a woman to drive me and my girlfriend to Seattle for $500 dollars. We managed to make our flight by the skin of our teeth after pushing the car across the border. When we crossed the border, there was zero snow. There was zero snow on the runway in Seattle. It was all an absolute shambled from the city of Vancouver and the YVR airport management. Each ticket has an airport improvement fee included and not one cent was invested into things like snow ploughs. We luckily made it home to Ireland after 30 hours of travelling.”
“In early-January, 2023, Tamara Vrooman, President and CEO, Vancouver Airport Authority, issued a statement outlining a series of initiatives that are currently underway at YVR. “This includes an operational review – known as an after-action review – that will bring together input from airlines, partners, suppliers and employees as well as a public engagement process to hear directly from the public and passengers impacted by the disruption to air travel in December and January. These initiatives and learnings will inform continued improvements at YVR and allow the airport to work across the aviation ecosystem to enhance the overall travel experience for passengers.”
Immigrant Muse Magazine 