Airline staffing issues and weather problems continue to bedevil would-be travellers in Canada and the U.S. New York City and Boston have been hardest hit today. As of 3:45 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, January 7, the website flightaware.com reports 328 cancellations for Canadian airlines for the day. It also said nearly one-half of all flights for snowy Halifax, Nova Scotia have been cancelled today. According to the site, Air Canada Jazz alone has cancelled 150 flights, which represents 30% of their total for the day. WestJet Encore has cancelled 59 flights, or 31%, the site said. For Air Canada, Read more
Canada
An influential Canadian tourism group is urging Ottawa to loosen testing restrictions and allow arriving passengers to get rapid COVID-19 tests. The Canadian government currently requires arriving passengers to provide a negative result from a PCR-style COVID test taken within 72 hours of their scheduled departure. But those tests are expensive, and results in some cases are taking longer than 72 hours to be reported. And that makes travel difficult. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson this week said it will no longer require re-departure tests for people travelling to Great Britain. The Guardian reports that Johnson said the Omicron variant Read more
The Omicron variant is wreaking havoc with Canadian airlines. A day after Air Canada Vacations said it was trimming flights and packages to a dozen or so sun destinations, Transat A.T. said it’s slashing its winter routes by 30%, and Porter Airlines said they’ll likely have to make cuts of their own. A Canadian Press story on the Global News site today said Transat blamed “the ongoing impact of the Omicron variant and the federal government’s Dec. 15 recommendation against non-essential travel abroad have triggered a wave of trip cancellations.” The cuts are due to stay in place until February Read more
It appears that some of the passengers on board the controversial Sunwing “party flight” to Mexico are back on Canadian soil. CTV News Montreal reports that roughly a dozen passengers managed to arrive in Montreal Wednesday night from Cancun. The network said passengers refused to answer questions from journalists who were waiting for them outside the terminal. Video footage of a Sunwing flight from Montreal to Cancun on December 30 showed reality television stars and Quebec social media influencers whooping it up and dancing in the aisles mid-flight. Many passengers were not wearing masks, while at least one person was Read more
The video of travellers partying like its 1999 on a Sunwing flight to Mexico has gone viral, and the Prime Minister of Canada is not amused. The party folks likely aren’t very happy, either, as it appears they’re having trouble getting home. Video footage of a flight from Montreal to Mexico on Dec. 30 started making the rounds a day or so ago. The footage shows passengers dancing in the aisles without masks. Some appear to be vaping, and one passenger seems to have a bottle of Grey Goose vodka. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau strongly condemned the passengers today Read more
