North Vancouver family stuck in Mexico amid WestJet strike hopes to return Thursday

It was supposed to be a fun, family-filled trip to Mexico to celebrate a birthday, but it’s turned into a nightmare for one North Vancouver family.

Megan Byrne and her family went to celebrate her husband’s birthday with his family. They arrived on June 26 and were supposed to fly back on June 30, but that didn’t happen. They say they were informed by WestJet on the 30th that their flight was cancelled, amid ongoing job action.

“WestJet basically said, ‘If you have to find a hotel, good luck, because everywhere is so fully overbooked right now.'”

Since then, she says they’ve spent as much as $2,000 on various things like extending their car rental, buying supplies for their toddler, groceries, and rebooking flights to come home.

“Because we only planned to come for just a quick trip, budget-wise we weren’t really planning to lose all these extra days of work, and my husband was supposed to go back and start a new job immediately. We’ve had to delay that … and now we basically have a week, that we weren’t expecting, that’s going to be unpaid now.”

Byrne says they rebooked with another airline, but because it wasn’t a direct flight and was expensive, they cancelled it. WestJet issued new flights and they’re hoping their flight home Thursday goes ahead.

“But we’re hoping it doesn’t get cancelled just because they keep overbooking them and we’ve been told they’re going to keep kicking people off the flight.”

She says this whole experience has left them feeling sour about the airline.

“A little concerned about future bookings. Definitely. I think just the lack of communication has been really frustrating. We have been on hold for over four hours and then the call just drops off. We literally have been waiting, and waiting, and waiting, and nothing, and it happened multiple times.”

Byrne says whether the family will receive compensation is up in the air.

“We never did get a hold of WestJet. We haven’t received emails from them. We haven’t received any updates from them. We still haven’t been able to get hold of an agent,” she said.

“We haven’t been able to get the line to go through. We’ve literally spent probably a total of 18 hours on phones with no answers. The unknown is what’s really frustrating. Not knowing what’s happening, not knowing if we’re going to get compensated for all this.”

WestJet’s website says labour disruptions that affect travel are out of their control.

“Under the Air Passenger Protection Regulations (APPR) a labour disruption within the carrier or within an essential service provider is considered outside of air carrier control. As a result, any disruption in travel plans due to work stoppage or strike are not eligible for compensation under APPR.”

On Wednesday, WestJet said its operations had “stabilized” after the strike by mechanics over the Canada Day long weekend upended the travel plans of thousands of people across the country. The airline says the total number of cancellations was 1,171 after 680 workers walked off the job last Friday. A tentative deal was reached on Sunday.

-With files from Angela Bower