Family loses luggage with vital medicine in YVR amid B.C. storm chaos

An Ontario family’s West Coast Christmas was in a holding pattern when they lost luggage containing vital medical supplies.

This set off a four-day emotional odyssey to replace their daughter’s type-one diabetes medication and to locate their missing bags.

The mother, Kim Tanczos, says they reluctantly checked their carry-ons with the promise they would be the first bags off at Vancouver International Airport (YVR).

“She assured me, so I believed her like an idiot. Going back, I should have taken that medication out,” Tanczos said.

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Tanczos was then promised the airline would send the bags to her, but they never did.

Almost worse than the missing bags, she says, was virtually the non-existent customer service. According to her, she never got a call from the airline, nor did the agent offer much help when she drove back at 2:00 a.m. to check on their bags.

“The agent said–‘I don’t know where your luggage is; it’s not checked in anywhere. It wasn’t on that last flight, and we have a flight coming in at 10:10 but it’s not on that one. I don’t know what to say,'” Tanczos recalled.

She then spent Christmas tracking down insulin pump supplies, finally finding someone who can help an hour away from where they were, and on Christmas morning.

“I don’t want to bother anyone at Christmas, but I showed up at her door and she gave me so much stuff and I’m so grateful,” she said.

With medication worries out of the way, their focus shifted to continuing the search for their luggage, back at YVR.

“Every day, we went to the airport. We drove there twice a day and looked for our luggage,” she said, adding they finally got their luggage back on Boxing Day.

Tanczos says there are many others like her, adding that there are still thousands of luggage at YVR.

“Thousands and thousands of pieces of luggage everywhere, and no security anywhere. Anybody could just grab a piece of luggage and walk out,” Tanczos added.

Spokesperson for YVR, Alyssa Smith, says each airline is responsible for their passengers’ luggage.

“The airlines use our facilities here. So there’s not sort of a specific area for one airline versus another. They are common-use facilities and then depending on where those airlines are gating up, they use our infrastructure to get those bags out on the carousels,” she told CityNews.

“They use our facilities but the luggage is under their care and control until the passenger comes and picks it up.”

As for Air Canada, the airline says in a statement to CityNews that the winter weather experienced in most of the continent led to an “increase in delayed and misconnected bags.”

“Air Canada advises on our website that customers should carry-on medication and they can use their purse or small carry-on item for this purpose,” the airline said in an email.

“Our policy is to allow medication as carry-on at all times. At the airport, customers should remove and keep with them any medication in the carry-on bag that they are asked to check.”