Air Canada made the mother and children sleep on the floor

A mother of three is speaking out about travel delays after spending the night with her young children on a floor at Toronto Pearson Airport during a weekend trip, costing her more than $1,000 in unexpected expenses.

Jennifer McDougall left Whitehorse, Yukon on June 25 with her 15-year-old, seven-year-old and six-month-old baby. They planned to travel with Air Canada to Sydney, New York, stopping in Vancouver and Toronto on the way to visit relatives.

“I'm on maternity leave right now,” McDougall told CTV News Toronto on Tuesday. “I thought I'd take them home for a few weeks and have a good summer.”

However, the trip turned out to be more complicated than McDougal expected. The delayed first flight from Whitehorse to Vancouver caused a domino effect of missed flights as their arrival in Vancouver was too late to make their connecting flight to Toronto.

After a five-hour delay in Vancouver, they were put on another flight to Toronto, landing at Pearson Airport around 10:30 p.m.

McDougall said she went to Air Canada customer service for information on how to get to Sydney and where to get the food and hotel vouchers she was promised during the delay.

“I wanted to go to a hotel and put my kids to sleep at night,” she said.

However, she says Air Canada's customer service desk was unhelpful, told her she couldn't fly out until the next day, and denied her food and hotel vouchers.

Jennifer McDougal's 7-year-old son sleeps on the floor of Toronto Pearson Airport.

Reached for comment, Air Canada said it was looking into McDougall's case and that they would be “dealing directly with the customer.”

“They kept telling me they didn't have any rooms left,” McDougall said. “So I said, 'Should I sleep on the floor with a six-month-old?' I said. and (the representative) said, “Yes, it should be done.”

McDougall said he was promised a connecting flight would leave at 7:30 a.m. the next morning.

So she spent the night on the airport floor with her two children and a baby, an experience she called “horrific.”

“I didn't want to leave (my children) unattended so I could sleep, so I had to sit up and stay up all night,” she said, adding that she didn't have access to diapers. During this time, he changed clothes and had to pay for food from the nearby shops out of his own pocket.

She also says her children are “traumatized” by the experience.

“That's the first visit (my seven-year-old son) really remembers since COVID, and he was completely devastated,” McDougall explained. “He doesn't know it's not normal.”

At 7 a.m., Air Canada canceled the flight that McDougall was told his family would be on, he said.

“I've never had a relationship like this in my life,” McDougall said. “My children were crying.”

They agreed to fly to Halifax instead of Sydney, hoping to get to Nova Scotia sooner, but that required a connecting flight in Montreal.

After they landed in Montreal, they were grounded once again and had to spend an extra unexpected night — this time in a hotel, paid out of pocket — before making it to another connecting flight that took them to Halifax, New York.

McDougall says Air Canada did not offer a second night's stay either.

Now McDougall is still in Halifax, waiting for him and his family's luggage, lost due to delays, cancellations and rebooked flights. Tomorrow, his relatives plan to pick him up with his children from Halifax and take him to Sydney. He says he doesn't know how they will get their lost luggage.

“We probably owe $1,000 for the whole weekend,” he said, noting that Air Canada had not reimbursed him for any expenses at the time of publication.

“It was bad experience after bad experience and no one cared,” he said.

In a statement to CTV News Toronto, Air Canada said: “Delayed bags have been common with the resumption of post-pandemic travel, and these and other challenges faced by the industry around the world are well understood and have been. well published.”

“One reason is that there are more people traveling and more bags. We're now transporting 120,000 or more people a day, compared to 23,000 a year ago.”

The airline also noted that the pandemic has changed the “global operating environment,” resulting in “security and customs lines, aircraft being held up at airports at gates unable to disembark passengers, and air traffic control restrictions on the number of flights, forcing airlines to fly.” make a last-minute cancellation.”

In the meantime, McDougall says she wants to get her story out there so other families don't have to go through what she went through.

“I want my story to be heard for one reason – and that's because I hate to see another mother go through this.”