Passengers booked with Lynx Air were left scrambling to replace cancelled flights after the ultra-low-cost airline announced Thursday evening that it is ceasing operations after filing for creditor protection.
All flights scheduled Monday, Feb. 26 or later are cancelled, effective 12:01 a.m. MT. The Calgary-based company has advised passengers with existing bookings to contact their credit card company to secure refunds for pre-booked travel.
The airline said it was unable to overcome compounding financial pressures associated with inflation, fuel costs, exchange rates, cost of capital, regulatory costs and competition in the Canadian market.
“It is with a heavy heart we leave the skies,” Lynx said in a statement on its website.
“We hope in our absence that our vision to inspire more Canadians to fly leaves its mark on our passengers.”
But some travellers said Friday morning that chaos had already begun three days before the airline is officially set to shut down.
Sal Saied was supposed to fly from Toronto to Los Angeles around 9:30 a.m. on Friday, but said she received an email from Lynx stating the trip would be delayed over an hour. She was at the gate about to board the plane at 10:45 when there was an announcement that the flight was cancelled altogether.
“We lined up to get ready to board, then they actually told us to step back down and about five minutes after they told us that our flight was cancelled,” she said.
“They told us to essentially leave the airport.”
Saied, who found a replacement ticket at an “extremely high price,” described the situation as a “fiasco.”
“It’s really frustrating,” she said.
Jean-Francois Turcotte and his girlfriend were planning to fly to Las Vegas from Montreal next Friday for a five-day trip with 12 of their friends, but Lynx’s announcement has left them hurrying to find another way there.
The couple had booked their departing flight on Lynx along with a return flight on Air Canada through Bookings.com. Turcotte said he has now looked into cancelling the whole vacation, but was told Bookings.com wouldn’t reimburse their Air Canada flights.
“From what they’ve been telling us on the phone, there’s no impact on the return flight and we have to take the return flight even though we don’t have an outgoing flight anymore,” he said.
“It’s just a matter of deciding if we’re cancelling the trip altogether or if we are just buying a very expensive last minute ticket to still go on the trip.”
While they initially paid about $250 each way per person, Turcotte said tickets to Las Vegas next week appear to be north of $1,000 at this point.
Meanwhile, he said his girlfriend’s credit card company informed them they have to dispute the charge for their cancelled Lynx booking, a process which would then take 14 days to determine an outcome.
“Basically nobody has the answers now about what to do,” he said. “So we have to act not knowing what’s going to happen.”
WestJet said it was ready to help mitigate some of the issues for travellers. The airline said it will offer discounted fares for stranded domestic travellers and capped fares for Canadian repatriation flights on non-stop WestJet routes previously served by Lynx.
All economy cabin fares that meet that criteria are eligible for a 25 per cent discount between Feb. 22 and Oct. 26, as long as the booking is made by next Thursday.
“We are communicating closely with government officials and supporting agencies that are also working to address the needs of those impacted,” WestJet said in a statement.
Natasha MacLean, who was travelling to Halifax on Friday to visit family, said she received an email around 10 p.m. on Thursday informing her that the return flight she’d booked through Lynx 10 days from now was cancelled.
Speaking at Toronto’s Pearson airport, she said she booked a new return flight at double the cost.
“This is my first time flying with Lynx and I’m not impressed with customer service and the late notice,” she said.
“Very stressful, a lot of anxiety and disappointment.”
Beyond the immediate impact to be felt by travellers, the Air Line Pilots Association International said 160 pilots and flight crew will be affected.
As of the end of last year, Lynx Air employed approximately 500 employees – 390 in Alberta and 110 in Ontario, according to an affidavit filed Thursday by interim chief financial officer Michael Woodward in the Court of King’s Bench of Alberta.
The document said Lynx operates a uniform fleet of nine Boeing 737 MAX 8 aircraft.
National Bank of Canada analyst Cameron Doerksen said in a note that Lynx’s closure illustrates the challenges of the low-cost carrier model in Canada, given higher airline industry costs than other countries and a limited number of large routes that are already served by other airlines.
Doerksen said one of the financial backers of Lynx was Indigo Partners, a successful private equity investor in numerous low-cost airlines globally.
“The fact that even with the help of an experienced investor, Lynx Air was unable to have success with its ultra-low-cost model strategy and was also unable to source additional capital to sustain its operations speaks to the challenges any startup airline faces in Canada,” he said.
“We would not be surprised to see other rapidly growing airlines’ growth plans scaled back.”
He added Lynx’s exit from the market should have positive implications for the larger carriers in Canada, including Air Canada and Air Transat.
– With files from Maan Alhmidi in Toronto
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 23, 2024.
VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.
The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.
The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.
The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.
The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.
MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.
In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.
“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.
“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”
In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.
“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.
The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.
“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”
The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.
The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.
A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.
Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.
Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.
Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.
“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.
“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”
Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.
“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.
Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.
“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”
But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.
Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.
“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.
Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.
The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.
