scrubbedexpat091

Air Transat cancelling most of its flights from western Canada this winter, affected customers will receive refunds.

CBC

beckiwoo

they are supposed to refund any flight from a western Canada airport that was not domestic, and did not have a connection in Montreal or Toronto. They are refunds flights from end of March first of all and then working from a schedule depending when the flights were due to depart.

They may decide to change their minds again so I’m not holding my breath

Revin Kevin

Did you have a previous SIN number?
had one issued in 2010, it's never been used as such and to my surprise it still checks out as valid.

https://www.payroll.ca/Resources/Too...ification-Tool

DigitalGhost

Thank you so, so much. I'd never seen that website before. I do have the SIN and I know it still exists on their systems because the CRA checked it when they provided some documents for my EE application (one of my Canadian employers was an IT consulting agency who have since ceased trading).

My SIN returned this result when I put it into that tool:

Presumably I would still be OK to commence work using that number though, right? As long as I can also provide proof of my legal right to do so (i.e. my COPR). The only other problem is that I don't have the card anymore. I don't actually remember being issued with one at all but I got the SIN from my old T4's and ROE form.

DigitalGhost

It looks like Transat are already starting to trim the schedule. They've cancelled the outbound flight I booked for next month and bumped me forward by 1 day. It looks like they're only going to be running 2 flights per week between Manchester and Toronto. If that's what they have to do to keep operating though then it's fair enough I suppose.

beckiwoo

Many people, including myself would disagree! They have been a nightmare to deal with!

DigitalGhost

Oh that doesn't surprise me. I'm fortunate in that if they screw me around too excess then at least EU law means I can get my money back. I know people with reservations that depart from Canada may not be quite so fortunate though.

If it's any small consolation, I was supposed to go to Australia over Easter and ended up having to go through the bank to get a refund.

beckiwoo

You are lucky you got a refund. My credit card informed me today that AT have rebutted my chargeback despite the fact I also have EU law and CAA UK on my side.

DigitalGhost

They tried that but it failed. To be fair, with my flight to Australia it wasn't the fault of the airline. In fact, Singapore Airlines were great about the whole thing. It was the crappy online travel agent I booked the flight through.

I booked another internal flight for while I was in Australia and the agent and airline on that one were appalling but fortunately my credit card provider sorted it out through Section 75. I will never use GoToGate or Trip.com again after this, assuming they both even survive 2020.

DigitalGhost

Slightly odd question, does anyone have any experience of connecting via another airport in the UK with Transat? They've changed my reservation again so I now need to connect through Glasgow, which I have no big objection to, however their website makes it look like the whole journey is via Transat which seems extremely unlikely.

My guess would have been a code share with BA since FlyBe no longer exist however BA don't fly direct between Manchester and Glasgow anymore. In fact no airline does so far as I can tell and especially not at the moment since not many people are flying domestic or short haul for business. There's no full itinerary for the flight available on the Transat website either.

scrubbedexpat091

Looks like they have combined 2 flights into one, both the Manchester and Glasgow flight into one single flight.

Aircraft A321neo LR
Operated by Air Transat
Stop in Glasgow International Airport (GLA)

No mention of any connection just a stop, so looks like a thru flight.

DigitalGhost

Thanks, yeah that is what it looks like and that's ideal because it means no additional disembarking/security etc however I would have thought to fly an aircraft of that size between Scotland and NW England would be quite difficult. It shouldn't take 9 hours for a journey like that either if it's just a brief stop to let a few people disembark.

scrubbedexpat091

Nah not any harder to fly an A321 on that type of route then anything else.

Air Canada has flown some Airbus on Vancouver to Victoria flights in BC and its like 90 miles although over water but normally its a dash 8.

Delta and Alaska have both flown Vancouver to Seattle on 737-800/900 in normal times and its only 142 miles.

In this case seems like there is not sufficient demand for both a Glasgow and Manchester flight so they combined it into 1.

DigitalGhost

Well I learned something new today. In Europe they never use planes like that for short haul flights. In fact they don't even use them for cross-continental flights of less than 6 hours-ish if they can get away with it. I've flown between the UK and Istanbul many times and as far as Moscow and parts of Africa on tiny crappy old things with barely enough leg room to sit properly, which as a tall person isn't fun at all tbh.

It does look like they're just operating the connection themselves though from the looks of it. I'm not incredibly fussed but if they are planning on running a code share with another airline then it would be nice to know which one and the length of the connection etc. Their website is awful though and Canadian Affair don't seem to be offering these routes at all now.

Siouxie

More likely letting people get on - instead of 2 flights, amalgating them into 1 and collecting the few from Glasgow on the way through - be prepared to have people clambering to get their stuff in the overhead lockers