Stranded passengers call for more accountability for WestJet flight cancellations

Passengers are calling on airlines to do more for customers stranded due to the latest wave of flight cancellations to impact Canadian travellers. A system-wide outage at WestJet on Saturday led to the cancellation of over 200 WestJet, Swoop and Sunwing flights over the weekend. The airline later said the problem was caused by a "cooling issue" in its primary data centre. WestJet said that it scheduled an additional 10 flights for waiting passengers on Monday. WestJet said in an emailed statement that it's asking passengers to refrain from contacting the airline until 72 hours before their upcoming flights to ensure staff are able to prioritize calls. Air passenger rights advocate Gabor Lukacs said many of the affected passengers will be entitled to compensation. “We are hearing about chaos but I think what we should really be hearing is the passenger's rights in this situation." Lukacs said that cancellations due to a system-wide outage are within WestJet's control and that the airline is required to rebook passengers on new flights, even if they happen to be with another airline. Additionally, he noted WestJet will owe affected passengers compensation of up to $1,000 depending on the length of the delay under the federal Air Passenger Protection Regulations. <br/>