Before I bought and paid for a round trip ticket home to Toronto this Christmas, someone really should have told me that Canada 3000 was in financial difficulty. I think I had a right to know before I shelled out $689.08 for a ticket home for Christmas that I may never be able to recover.
That’s not the way a business operates, of course – if they had told people they were in trouble, people would have stopped flying their airline to prevent the misery I’m currently going through. In that case Canada 3000 would definitely have gone down the tubes, instead of just "probably."
It all came down to the same thing in the end. No more flight for me, or for the thousands of other travellers who are stuck with tickets. Over 4,800 employees are out of work, and people are stranded around the world waiting for the other half of their return trips to materialize. It’s not fair.
Even if I get a refund, it will probably come too late to book another flight. If I don’t get a refund, my Christmas is effectively cancelled.
The real question now is where did that money go? To one of Canada 3000’s many creditors? To the employees? Did it wind up in the back pocket of one of the companies’ directors before they resigned? Is my money going towards green fees?
Or do I own $689.08 worth of a jet airplane? Can I walk into their closed head office, grab a computer and walk out the door?
Or is it simply gone, vanished in a trail of paperwork and red tape?
I called my credit card company, assuming that the ticket would be insured or that they were holding onto my money like an escrow until the transaction could be completed, e.g. I get off the airplane in Vancouver on Dec. 28 after spending a pleasant week with my small family.
I even have a Gold Card, and pay an extra $100 a year for a load of little extras – I seem to remember that insurance was one them. I didn’t bother to get extra flight insurance, but then I don’t think it’s available when flying charter – all tickets, according to my receipt, are non-refundable.
The nice lady at the credit card company told me to contact my travel agency. In the meantime, she told me send a letter and a copy of my plane ticket to the credit card company to be added to the list. In the future, the company would try to recover costs of their cardholders through the bankruptcy process, and the sale of company assets – pardon my cynicism, but that particular process doesn’t sound all that fast. It could be Christmas 2006 before I see a dime.
I paid tax on that ticket. Will I see a refund? I’m paying credit card interest – can they at least freeze it for me until this issue is resolved?
Another nice and sympathetic lady at Travelocity.com, an online travel agent, didn’t say much but assured me that her company was looking into providing refunds for customers. She said she would know more at the end of the week. In the meantime, she put me on another list.
I understand that it’s unusual for an airline to declare bankruptcy like this, but it’s certainly not unprecedented; Donald Trump’s airline went belly up, and the ill-fated Roots airline was grounded last year almost as soon as it had taken off. In neither instance do I remember hearing anything about stranded passengers, or customers left scrambling for refunds.
What to do? Where to vent?
It’s not like I have all the time in the world to chase that money down. Call me paranoid, but I think a lot of the players in this case are probably hoping people will give up trying.
Meanwhile the Federal government is doing nothing. They have almost a hundred million dollars set aside to back the travel industry, but as usual they’re sitting back and watching to see how this whole thing plays out.
They also said they were on the verge of declaring Air Canada’s Tango carrier an unfair and anti-competitive company, which would have returned Canada 3000’s supremacy in the domestic air market. Tango competed directly with Canada 3000 on many of their routes, offering low prices and Air Canada incentives such as air miles that were hard for travellers to turn down.
I say that’s B.S. As if the company went bankrupt the day before the government could announce their decision! If there’s one thing I’ve learned about this country it’s that the bureaucracy is slow, but the paycheques are right on time.
If the government had shared that information with the company and its shareholders, there’s no way the company would have gone under. It would have given them a virtual discount flier monopoly on many routes in Canada and abroad, and monopolies are a license to print money.
The federalis offered the company a $75 million loan guarantee to get back into business but only if they could come up with a viable business plan that met their approval.
Unfortunately, Canada 3000 needed the loan yesterday, not months from now after completing a business strategy that the government actually liked. The government’s condition also implies that the company was a victim of its own bad judgement and incompetence rather than bad luck and bad timing.
Let’s see, so far I’ve blamed Canada 3000, my travel agent, the federal government… I guess I should also blame the terrorists who have brought the airline industry to its knees. I can’t go home for Christmas because of Muslim fundamentalism opposed to U.S. air bases in Saudi Arabia?
If the U.S. government is seizing the financial assets of terrorists and terrorist sympathizers, can I please get my $689.08 back out of that?
If I succeed in getting a refund, it will probably be too late to fly home. If I don’t get my money back, I can’t go home, period. Sorry mom.
The way I see it, the only option I really have is to complain loudly and frequently to everyone up the chain, the airline, the travel agency, the credit card company and the travel agency until they finally break down and give me a ticket home for the holidays. Merry f-ing Christmas!
— Andrew Mitchell
