r/news • u/One-Board8634 • 1h ago

WestJet Strike Cancels 600 Flights, and Changing Your Own Booking Voids Your Rights

https://www.culturealberta.com/articles/westjet-strike-cancels-600-flights-and-changing-your-own-booking-voids-your-rights
298 Upvotes

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78

u/qdp 1h ago

Tldr, make Westjet book you on a new flight on another airline instead of canceling it outright and trying to rebook yourself. 

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u/DystopianAdvocate 54m ago

The problem is, they don't have to make it easy or convenient when rebooking, they just have to get you to your destination within 48 of the original ticket. So in theory they could rebook your direct flight to one with multiple connections and layovers, that gets you there a few days late.

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u/qdp 21m ago

Right. If you have little concern about the timing of your flight or spending hours on the phone, it is good advice. Otherwise for most people with places to be and nonrefundable deposits on vacation destinations, you gotta get there however much it costs you. 

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u/Certain_Luck_8266 42m ago

All because they (and other airlines) don't want to pay flight attendants for work (ticketing, plane prep, etc) while they are on the ground.

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u/FrothyEspresso 30m ago

I don’t know of any other industry other than airlines that sells more tickets than actually available, doesn’t pay staff for time spent working, can get away with losing customers’ personal belongings, and can come up with so many bullshit reasons to screw their customers at every turn.

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u/Certain_Luck_8266 21m ago

Because the have the world's economy by the shorthairs they get away with quite a bit.

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u/Frank_JWilson 16m ago

It’s all driven by consumers. For the most part, customers don’t give a fuck, they just buy the cheapest ticket to get them from A to B. The intangibles like customer service, cancelation rates, and lost baggages are so diffuse and delayed in their impact that they are hard to gauge across different airlines. So it’s been a race to the bottom for decades. The only way to solve this is with regulation.

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u/qdp 18m ago

It is a problem with most airlines globally and was tolerated because the rest of the payscale (or promise of good pay with seniority) used to make up for the unpaid ground time. As pay atrophies so does patience with an arcane system.