Waterloo couple loses big after Flair Airlines places bad bet on Las Vegas

[Kip Powick]

Seniors found themselves stranded on vacation after the budget airline abandoned the under-performing route.

Waterloo residents Ziggy and Kathy Klaus are unhappy with Flair Airlines after having to cut short a trip to Las Vegas.

Flair Airlines had high hopes last winter that sun-seeking passengers would fly to Las Vegas from the Waterloo Region airport. It was a bad bet.

The airline cancelled the new route in March over what it calls “lower-than-expected demand and under-performance.”

That’s when Ziggy Klaus found his vacation ruined.

The Waterloo senior was left stranded in Las Vegas with his wife Kathy and another Kitchener couple after Flair flew them to the Nevada desert March 18 but cancelled their return flight home March 22.

“I would never fly again with Flair,” Klaus said.

Flair abandons destinations quickly if enough seats go empty. “Our network is designed to fly where our customers want to go,” airline vice-president Eric Tanner said, explaining why the airline yanked its Kitchener-to-Las Vegas route after just a few months.

Tanner said “schedule changes are communicated early, often and clearly to minimize inconvenience” to passengers.

That’s not how Klaus sees it.

In January, he received an email from ticket seller FlightHub alerting him to a change for the March trip he booked to celebrate the 30th wedding anniversary of friends.

The message did not say their return flight to Kitchener was cancelled. It said “the airline has made changes to the itinerary.” It directed him to an unfamiliar Flair Airlines website that he was unable to navigate to find details.

From this communication, Klaus, 69, did not understand he no longer had a way home. “Why not just make it simple, instead of making you jump through hoops?” he said.

It further frustrates him that two months later, Flair allowed four passengers to board in Kitchener and depart for Las Vegas without telling them they no longer had a return flight.

“To let us on the plane, we automatically assume that ‘Yeah, we’re coming back at some point,’” he said.

Alerted to the cancellation by other passengers after they reached Las Vegas, the group had to cut short their vacation, pay $1,400 for last-minute seats to Toronto, and hail a taxi back to Kitchener.

Klaus has complained to Flair but has not heard back about compensation.

Flair continues to draw more than twice the passenger complaints made against Air Canada or WestJet, per flight. But the airline is making progress in its bid to reduce complaints.

It continues also to shuffle its destinations out of the Region of Waterloo International Airport.

In May and June, Flair plans to return to a number of Canadian cities that were set aside last winter when the airline pivoted to sunspot destinations.

“We are gearing up for our busiest summer season yet and the significant growth we’re seeing in (Waterloo Region) reaffirms both customer demand and our commitment to this market,” Tanner said.

[Seeker]

Missing from the story is that Klaus intended to file a lawsuit to recover the $19.99 that each of his party had  paid for the return flight.

[J.O.]

If it sounds too good to be true ...