Lost luggage and flight delays keep troubling travellers

Starting a vacation without your luggage is not ideal and spending the first two days of your trip looking for those bags is worse.

It’s not something you’ll find in a tourist brochure. Cedric Leiba is back for day two at the Ottawa Airport, looking for his missing luggage in a pile of bags in the arrivals area.

“I came in from Toronto and, uh, my luggage didn’t,” he told CTV News Ottawa on Tuesday.

The Florida visitor arrived via Toronto’s Pearson Airport Monday at noon. Twenty-four hours later, he was still looking for his bags.

“They told me that my luggage would be available that evening, which was yesterday evening, and it wasn’t,” he says. “We had no alternative but to come to the airport and see what was going on and hopefully find our luggage.”

He is not alone. Ottawa resident Regina Bateson flew into Ottawa on Sunday and her twins’ car seats didn’t arrive after connecting through Pearson. She says Air Canada gave them car seats for the ride home, and she returned on Monday to look for hers.

“There was a kayak, there were kayak paddles, there was just a ton of stuff there,” she says. “When I actually went to get them out, the agent came over and was swimming through the pile of luggage with me. There was another person’s car seat on top of our car seats. They were on luggage carts. There was a wheelchair in front of them and there was other stuff behind them.”

It’s not just delayed luggage—flights are a problem too, as Rebecca Alexandre found out.

“Because of technical problems, our flight is unable to leave on time here, which means we will miss our connection in Toronto, so Air Canada is trying to help us out by giving us a hotel, if necessary a taxi, and meal vouchers.”

Travel volume is up all throughout the world, including Ottawa. The Ottawa Airport is seeing up to 68 per cent of pre-pandemic passenger volume, according to airport spokesperson Krista Kealey.

“In fact, in Ottawa we’re actually doing quite well with it all. Some of the larger airports that have a lot more passenger volumes are seeing those kinds of issues a lot more than we are.”

Travel issues are being seen throughout the world.

“I think that the entire aviation ecosystem is in a bit of a crisis right now, in terms of staffing levels. Everybody had to scale down during the pandemic, and scaling back up takes time,” she says.

But it’s not a turbulent experience for everyone.

“No, not at all - if anything, it was a little early,” C.J. Woodford, returning from the Maritimes told CTV News.

“I’m coming in from Halifax, it was amazing there was no issues at all,” says another traveler on a flight from Halifax.

As for Leiba, while being interviewed for this story, an Air Canada employee found his bags.

“It feels great man!” he says.