Last July we had our wedding in my home-country in Europe and our honeymoon in the south of Portugal. Due to the turmoil that is currently going on in in the land of air travel (unacceptable, but that is for another post) we decided to book separate flights and WestJet seemed the best option for our return trip back to Seattle. If only I had read any of the reviews that were posted before...
The two flights (lay-over in Calgary) were fine (really not more than that). But we left Paris with an hour delay because the captain decided to wait for one of the lavatories to be fixed (his words: it isn't a necessary measure, but nice to have). Then it turned out that we also waited for a passenger who was lost at the airport. I can appreciate the Canadian niceness, but this made a good number of passengers on board miss their connection to Seattle and having to spend the night in Calgary. This is where WestJet's **** show really started...
First, finding WestJet's transfer desk at Calgary airport was an absolute nightmare. It's not located near the check-in, but on the other side of the airport... They should have made that a lot clearer when they informed us we won't make our second flight, only 20 minutes before landing in Calgary... Gee thanks, WestJet!
Then the line at the desks was insane! After a more than 2 hour wait (!) the only thing the transfer agent told us was to book a hotel and we would get reimbursed. Did we have to wait more than 2 hours for that?! Really WestJet, get your act together and find a better way to communicate about this!
Of course all hotels were booked by that time (8:00PM local time and the Calgary Stampede was apparently happening). With more than 200 people getting the same information, one could expect that hotels were booked by the time it was our turn...
That all happened on July 9th... It is now October 4th and we still haven't gotten our expenses reimbursed, nor have we gotten any news on the status. Calling WestJet doesn't help.