Travel agents share their tips on how to help minimize disruption for clients due to airport delays

TORONTO — It looks as if journey simply can’t catch a break nowadays.

First, your entire world business shut down nearly in a single day in March 2020 because of the pandemic, and remained largely inactive for 2 lengthy years. After which when journey restrictions lastly lifted and borders reopened all over the world, travellers, notably these in Canada, have been hit with lengthy passport processing instances, huge airport delays and widespread flight cancellations, an unlucky byproduct of employees shortages and excessive journey demand.

And caught in the midst of all of it are journey brokers, who’ve been tasked with selecting up the items of their shoppers’ damaged journey plans.

Joe Scott, President of 12 months Spherical Journey Inc., in Toronto tells Travelweek that the present state of affairs at Canada’s main airports has resulted in lots of horror tales for his shoppers, together with one flying from Toronto to Grand Prairie, Alberta. As a forensic engineer, the consumer needed to be in Grand Prairie on a selected day to work on website and attend a courtroom case. His flights have been cancelled the evening earlier than he was scheduled to depart, and he was rerouted two days later by means of London, Ontario and Calgary.

“I spent three and a half hours on the telephone with the airline to resolve the difficulty and lo and behold, that they had a a lot better various that bought him to the vacation spot simply three hours later than initially scheduled and in time for his courtroom case. Why this wasn’t supplied to him within the first place, I don’t know,” says Scott.

Sadly, the consumer’s troubles didn’t finish there. The airline misplaced an costly piece of labor tools he had checked (valued at $15,000), forcing him to lease an inferior piece of apparatus to carry out his work duties. (Fortunately, his tools materialized a couple of days later.) On prime of that, his spouse, who was assembly him in Calgary for a highway journey to the Rockies, had her direct flight from Toronto rerouted by the airline to Vancouver, in a single day, which might have been at her expense, a state of affairs that, fortunately, was additionally resolved throughout Scott’s prolonged telephone name with the airline.

“I feel the airways thought they’d flip a swap and all the pieces can be identical to February 2020 when the truth is, we’ve misplaced roughly 30% of our workforce,” says Scott. “So possibly wait to journey till airways ramp up flights in a sensible method. It’s going to take some time to get again to regular.”

Different ideas from Scott to attenuate journey disruption right now embody bringing solely carryon baggage, reconfirming flights earlier than heading to the airport, checking in on-line, guaranteeing hardcopies of proof of vaccination and face masks are packed and, in fact, reserving with a journey agent.

“There have been a number of complications brought on by the present airport state of affairs however I’ll take this headache over final yr’s, which was, ‘Will my telephone ring this month?’” he says.

Laurie Keith, President of Romantic Planet Holidays in Beamsville, Ontario, shares comparable ideas for travellers after noting that flight delays have now develop into the norm.

“The incidence of delayed flights proper now could be essentially the most I’ve seen within the 25 years of being a journey company proprietor in Canada,” she says. “One of the best recommendation we are able to provide shoppers is to ‘pack your persistence’ and be certain that you triple-check your flight instances earlier than departure. Higher but, join the airline’s notifications.”

Keith additionally suggests arriving “tremendous early” on your scheduled departure and work in ample time between connections.

“I had a consumer from Ottawa final week who was booked at a fishing retreat on Vancouver Island with a bunch of mates, adopted by a river cruise on the Higher Danube in Austria and Germany with their household,” she says. “They wished to spend only a day at residence to repack and go onward to Europe, however I personally thought three days in between the 2 journeys can be higher, simply in case.”

Keith’s shoppers took her recommendation, which paid off large time.

“They ended up being fogged in for 2 days on the island,” Keith recollects. “My consumer texted me in a panic however I used to be in a position to assist her get on a special airline residence, at an extra expense, simply in time to repack and board her flight to Vienna, which was additionally delayed by a couple of hours on account of employees shortages. They made the river cruise and are having fun with it as we converse.”