August 18th - Escape from Canada – two families tell their stories of being caught up in strike mayhem
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 18 August 2025
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Dearing family and the Robinson family, from Beverley in East Yorkshire, enjoyed a dream holiday in Canada – until they reached Calgary the night before their planned nonstop Air Canada flight back to London Heathrow. They discovered that Air Canada had cancelled their flight and left them high and dry. They have been telling me their story ...
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast with me, Simon Calder. It's Monday the 18th of August. |
| 0:07.1 | And today I bring you a cautionary tale of how if you're flying from outside Europe on a non-UK or non-European airline, your passenger rights can simply vanish. |
| 0:20.1 | This is all about the Air Canada dispute with cabin |
| 0:25.4 | crew. It's a right old mess. The cabin crew voted 99.7% in favour of a strike. A strike was |
| 0:34.5 | called. Air Canada chose to impose a complete cessation of flying. |
| 0:41.3 | The chief executive and president Michael Russo called shutting the airline down the only responsible |
| 0:48.1 | course of action. While this was going on, two families from Beverley in East Yorkshire, |
| 0:54.7 | the Deerings and the Robinsons, were having the time of their lives in the great outdoors, |
| 1:00.9 | blissfully unaware of the industrial action, as Pete Deering has been telling me. |
| 1:06.3 | We started in Vancouver. We had three nights there. We then picked up an RV, |
| 1:27.9 | and from there we went to Whistler, Clearwater, Mount Robson, Jasper, Lake Louise, Banff, and then to Calgary. The plan was for one night in Calgary just before we got the flight home. To be honest, we didn't have a very good signal, so we didn't know anything about, and also we were off grid. |
| 1:30.0 | We didn't know anything about the strike at all. |
| 1:36.2 | It was only when we arrived in Calgary that we noticed that we had an email from Air Canada, basically, |
| 1:40.1 | preparing us that there might be a chance that our flight is cancelled. |
| 1:46.6 | But we only picked out probably five, six o'clock on the evening before our flight being eight o'clock the following day. |
| 1:54.5 | With Air Canada planning a close down, it was pretty inevitable that the family's flights would be cancelled. |
| 1:58.3 | Mark Robinson read me the email they received. |
| 2:03.7 | So as we are writing to inform you that upcoming flight is at risk of cancellation due to a planned labour disruption by Canada flight attendants, we advise you to consider using the flexible |
| 2:10.0 | re-booking policy we have in place which allows you to change your flight at no additional |
| 2:14.4 | cost. |
| 2:15.2 | Just as if you opt to keep your current booking and your flight is |
| 2:18.3 | cancelled due to labour disruption, Canada will attempt to re-book you on another flight, including |
... |
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