Over the weekend we got ready for our guests arrival from the UK on Monday. They were expected to arrive at 11.10am but when we got up on Monday morning and checked on Air Canada’s website for their flight we found that it had been delayed by three hours at take off. So rather than having to leave early morning we didn’t have to leave until later as they weren’t expected in until 2.20 pm.
We had a good trip to the airport and arrived a few minutes before they were due to land. We made our way to the arrivals area and waited. They eventually came through at about 3.10pm so not too bad.
They were both fed up with traveling as they had gotten up at three am UK time to get to the airport and then had to wait for six hours at the airport until the plane eventually took off. Then they had the flight itself to contend with. They were surprisingly alert which was apparently due to drinking large quantities of Red Bull!
We drove home and we caught up with each others news. We thought they might want to go to bed, but they were still pretty okay when we got home so we had some pasta for dinner as it was quick and easy. We spent the next couple of hours chatting and eventually they gave up and went to bed around 8.15 pm. We were surprised they lasted that long.
Today we let them sleep in and they eventually surfaced and after breakfast etc we went into Belleville. More to follow later…..
On Thursday we found out that Zoom Airline had suddenly gone into receivership. Guess what airline my stepdaughter and friend are visiting us on in a couple of weeks – yes Zoom!
We emailed her but she did not answer, we then phoned her, but it just went to voicemail. Then hubby tried contacting her via Facebook and told her to turn her phone on. She did and when we told her what had happened and that she now had no flights and had possibly lost her money she was devastated. Not sure if it was the loss of a holiday, the loss of money or the possibility of not seeing us!!!
We told her not to panic at the moment and that whilst she was at work we would do some research and find out what was going on.
There was no way the existing flights were going to happen so I started looking for new flights and found the prices to be twice that which they paid due to the closeness of the timing. I did however find Air Canada flights that were just 100GBP more between them which was the best I could find.
We then found out they had paid via debit card and would not get a refund and they did not have enough money to rebook the new flights. I asked which debit card and found that it was a visa debt card. When I researched this I found that this was in fact treated very similar to a credit card and you could actually get your money back. So armed with this info we go back to her and told her to contact her bank to confirm this was the case.
Another phone call later it turned out that yes they can get the money back but it could take four weeks, but luckily the bank felt sorry for them and gave then a loan to cover the new flights until they got their refund. So new flights were booked and they are now back on track to visit early next month. PHEW!
One very stressful evening for all of us.
On a lighter note we are still attracting the butterflies with our butterfly bushes. I took these pics of a monarch butterfly who paid a visit today.
