‘I am absolutely never flying Flair again,’ Elmira man says after airline cancels flight home from Mexico

ELMIRA - An Elmira family is out of pocket more than $3,100 after Flair Airlines cancelled Wednesday's flight home from Mexico, told them to wait seven days for another flight, and provided nothing for hotels or meals.

Unwilling to wait, the family of four flew home as planned Wednesday after scrambling to buy pricey, same-day tickets on a different airline.

I am absolutely never flying Flair again. I can be 100 per cent certain about that," Julian Gavaghan said. It's just too much of a gamble, isn't it?"

He's flown other budget carriers including Spirit Airlines and Ryanair, but never had a trip go so wrong. Budget airlines are not new to me. And because they're not new to me, I've always been very happy to take them," he said.

Before their vacation went sideways, the Gavaghan family enjoyed the convenience of flying to Cancun, Mexico, out of the Region of Waterloo International Airport on Dec. 28.

They liked cheap Flair tickets that cost them $1,900. Mom, dad and two children spent a happy week in Mexico, renting a car and travelling.

But five hours before they were to return Wednesday, the budget airline told them their flight home was cancelled. Flair cited adverse weather conditions affecting flight schedule outside airline's control."

The airline explains that bad weather in Breslau Tuesday night forced an inbound Flair flight to divert to Toronto. The airplane could not be brought back to Breslau in time to depart at 6:50 a.m. Wednesday for Mexico.

Flair is really sorry about this situation and the impact to passengers," spokesperson Mike Arnot said. It strives to fly its schedule."

Because Flair is classified as a small carrier by Canadian regulations, it only has to rebook passengers on the next available Flair flight. Large airlines such as Air Canada and WestJet must rebook passengers within two days, even if this means putting them on a competing airline.

Flair offered to return the Gavaghan family to Breslau on Jan. 11. There were earlier flights, but they were full. That is the earliest date the passengers could be accommodated," Arnot said.

The airline is not required to pay for hotels when cancellations are deemed outside its control.

There needs to be some kind of regulation put in place that protects passengers and gives them more rights," Gavaghan said. It feels like it should be the responsibility of the airline to put you on a flight within a more reasonable window than seven days."

With jobs and school obligations looming and no hotel or meal compensation, the family could not stay another week in Mexico. They booked same-day tickets to Pearson International in Toronto on Aeromexico at a cost of more than $4,000.

Flair has refunded $850 for their cancelled tickets, which partly offsets the expense. Gavaghan intends to seek more compensation. I don't have a lot of hope," he said. I'd like them to ideally cover the expense that we were forced to pay."

Flair has taken Waterloo Region passengers on a bumpy ride in recent weeks.

The airline cancelled 27 flights early in December after a jetliner overran a runway at Breslau. This helped trigger a backlog of maintenance and repairs. Pre-Christmas storms then disrupted flights on airlines across the nation.

Flair led all other Canadian airlines in passenger complaints lodged between April and September last year, according to the Canadian Transportation Agency.

Jeff Outhit is a Waterloo Region-based general assignment reporter for The Record. Reach him via email: jouthit@therecord.com