Frustrations continue to mount at Canada's airports as reports of lost and delayed baggage pile up, with some passengers spending weeks, or even months, waiting for their missing checked luggage to catch up with them.
Catherine Roberts and her husband, Bob Sales, had plans to celebrate her 70th birthday with a European cruise. They flew with WestJet and Aer Lingus from Winnipeg to Dublin via Toronto on May 15. But after their flight to Toronto arrived late, they had to be booked onto another connecting flight to Dublin.
Nearly 70 days later, Sales still hasn't gotten his bag back.
And while they had an enjoyable time on the cruise ship after purchasing new clothes and underwear for their trip, Sales said the lost luggage was "a black cloud" that loomed over his wife's head.
"It was dreadful. No money will ever be able to replace that," Sales said in a phone interview with CTVNews.ca on Tuesday.
For Surrey B.C. resident Simon Crimp, who flew with his son on Air Canada from Vancouver to London, U.K. via Halifax on June 3, his bag was also nowhere to be found after arriving at Heathrow airport.
Like Sales, Crimp also had to spend the first day of his trip trying to chase down his bag and buying replacement clothes, while losing a valuable day of sightseeing. He didn't get his bag back until July 12 -- more than a month after his flight.
"You know, it was very, very frustrating," Crimp told CTVNews.ca over the phone on Wednesday. "The trip was basically messed up thanks to (Air Canada) losing our bag."
LACK OF COMMUNICIATION
Many passengers who shared stories of baggage going missing told CTVNews.ca they had trouble getting answers from airline staff regarding where their luggage was and when they could expect it to arrive.
On Canada Day, Dan MacLean daughter and his daughter flew with WestJet from Regina to Sydney, N.S. via Calgary and Toronto, only to find that his luggage and car seat were nowhere to be found at his final destination. When he asked when his bags would arrive, he says there was "little to no direction" from staff.
"On a scale of one to ten, I'd give (WestJet customer service) a zero," MacLean told CTVNews.ca over the phone on Tuesday. "The staff, they were polite, of course. But it was just a massive runaround. You would ask one person at customer service, you get one answer, and then you'd go say to another and that the answer was totally incorrect. It's almost like the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing."
MacLean's luggage did eventually arrive at his home in Saskatchewan, 21 days later.
Crimp said he became frustrated being put on hold for hours while trying to reach Air Canada staff over the phone.
"You're basically waiting for maybe one and a half to two hours before you can connect with somebody. And then when you connect with somebody, they can't always tell you anything that you want to know, " Crimp said.
Sales said had a similar experience. In the days and weeks after the couple's trip, he said WestJet staff repeatedly told him and his wife that their luggage would be delivered to them, even though it never came.
And for Yasmin Bhaloo, whose oversized luggage went missing after she flew on Swoop Airlines from Toronto to Orlando-Sanford on June 25, she said it was impossible to get ahold of anyone by phone, or even social media.
"There's no human to answer your phone call. It's all robo-calls," she told CTVNews.ca on Wednesday in a phone interview. "I've sent them by Instagram, by Facebook, through their website. Nothing so far. Is there no person to talk?"
THE FIGHT FOR COMPENSATION
Under the Montreal Convention, airlines around the world are legally required to compensate travellers for any "reasonable" expenses incurred, such as interim purchases to replace missing clothing and other essentials.
Passengers can claim up to 1,288 Special Drawing Rights, which are accounting units used by the International Monetary Fund. That's equivalent to about C$2,300 per passenger, per bag.
Sales estimates that he and his wife lost around $3,500 between the two of them. Crimp says he also had to spend around $3,000 to buy replacement clothes for him and his son. Both Crimp and Sales have sent their expenses to the airlines and are waiting to hear back.
Crimp said because it was a Sunday, the only stores that they could buy clothes at were expensive souvenir shops. "Most of the regular stores weren't open, except for, like, souvenir shops. So we had to pay tourist prices," he said.
Bhaloo was also reunited with her luggage after nearly two weeks. Her missing luggage was a box of snacks that she intended to gift to her family in Florida.
Because her box had been lost, she couldn't deliver the snacks to her family and instead had to ship them. She's now trying to get Swoop to reimburse her for her checked baggage fees and shipping fees.
But for MacLean, he said he didn't think it was worth the effort to try and seek compensation, given that he got his luggage back and he didn't have to spend all that much on replacement items.
"Thankfully, we didn't have, you know, expensive stuff. Just clothing, stuff like that," he said.
In an emailed statement to CTVNews.ca, WestJet said it was "committed to doing everything we can to deliver the WestJet experience our guests expect from us and we are making every effort to connect impacted guests with their missing bags."
"We continue to work alongside our third-party service providers to alleviate baggage delays and have invested in additional WestJet oversight to support our partners responsible for actioning and delivering our baggage services in a timely manner," WestJet spokesperson Madison Kruger wrote.
Air Canada told CTVNews.ca the global aviation industry continues to face issues with airport capacity, mechanical issues with baggage systems, as well as issues with "third-party providers of such services as passenger screening, customs, and air navigation."
"All these and other events, such as a severe storm, can interrupt our schedule and the flow of not only passengers but also their baggage, which moves in a parallel, but more complicated stream than customers." Air Canada spokesperson Tim Fisher said in an email to CTVNews.ca on Thursday. "We are working hard with the partners in the aviation ecosystem and governments to resolve these issues."
CTVNews.ca reached out to Swoop Airlines, but the company did not respond by press time.
If the airline hasn't responded to your claim, or if they reject your claim, airline consumer advocacy group suggests suing the airline in small claims court.
That's exactly what Sales and his wife plan on doing if they don't get a satisfactory response.
"I just hope that, whenever we do that day in court, that we'll get a fair hearing and the airlines will not send their Bay Street lawyers to fight a couple of 70-year-olds and beat us down," Sales said.
