What to do after Air Canada cancelled flight home

score:4

Accepted answer

Answering my own question:

  • No further contact from Air Canada following the cancellation email

  • It was impossible to contact them via any means

  • With assistance from friends back in the UK (eg looking up flight availability, checking on the status of travel restrictions relevant to potential routing options), my friend managed to get home to the UK by travelling overnight Monday to Havana to board an Iberia flight Havana>Madrid>London, arriving home after c48 hours travelling.

Her spouse does not have residency in the UK so remains behind in Cuba.

So, the answer to what to do in the unprecedented situation we’re all facing is be proactive, don’t wait for events to overtake you. Make your own arrangements to get home.

Upvote:0

Your situation seems to be well in hand... but for others, another option is to contact your own embassy.

As far as the embassy is concerned, this is called "repatriation": returning citizens to homeland. At extremes, they'll send government aircraft*. But far more likely they'll just use their contacts within the airline** to get the flight you already paid for straightened out.

In the event of a government-flown rescue like this, it is common for government X to give courtesy flights to government Y's citizens; so for instance the UK might have their citizens hitch a ride on a US State Dept. flight to Miami, rather than send a flight from the Cayman Islands and then on to (gosh, probably Miami).

* For instance, America's State Dept. has the pull to get a military C-5 sent; some China evacuation was done by a Kalitta Air 747, under contract to the US military. However the State Dept. also has its own internal aircraft fleet also, including turboprops as large as Bombardier Dash-8's.

** e.g. the immigration people the airline work cheek to jowl with, or 2 meters apart these days.

More post

Search Posts

Related post