If a few days ago we were horrified of how they dragged a passenger off a United Airlines flight, now the consequences of "overbooking" have been suffered by a family, and more specifically by the son, a ten-year-old boy who has stayed on land when the family was preparing to travel to Costa Rica on vacation on an Air Canada flight.
The tickets had been purchased in August for the father, mother and their two children to travel in March from the city of Charlottetown to Montreal (in Canada), to travel from there to Costa Rica. As the father, Brett Doyle, has commented to the CBC chain in Canada, the day before the trip he checked online that there was no assigned seat for Cole, his ten year old son.
A stress that is priceless
After numerous calls to the company unable to resolve the matter, Shanna, the boy's mother went to the airport to find out what he could do and told him that the boy had no seat, since 34 tickets had already been sold for a plane with room for 28 people. He then asked to change his son's place to that of an adult, but he was told that they could not guarantee that, if a seat was released, it would be for his son.
P.E.I. family's 10-year-old son bumped from overbooked Air Canada flight //t.co/JgzCC47Yg1 pic.twitter.com/peQqjaSpaj
- CBC News (@CBCNews) April 16, 2017
Faced with this scenario, the family reacted quickly. They booked a flight from the city of Moncton, a two-hour drive, to Cole and his father for the same day so they could join the rest of the family in Montreal. But when they arrived in Moncton, they found that the trip had been canceled. "I thought it was a joke, that there were hidden cameras or something," said the father.
The next day, they traveled to Halifax to take a flight from there to Montreal where the four could join and travel to Costa Rica. The inconvenience was an expense of 700 euros, between hotel tickets and night, plus the stress of the family, which is priceless.
The company apologized
After the trip, Doyle contacted Air Canada, but received no responses. It was when the news went viral when He was offered an apology and a travel voucher of 2,500 Canadian dollars (1,744.30 euros).
"We are trying to find out what went wrong and we apologized to Mr. Doyle and his family, in addition to offering them very generous compensation for the inconvenience," an Air Canada spokeswoman told VancouverSun.
The real problem is the policy of the airlines to manage the "overbooking" on their flights. As the child's mother says: "We spend hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, on a plane ticket and we are not guaranteed a seat, so my question is what are we paying?"
