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If you have met me or read anything I have written before, you probably know that I travel to unconventional places by unconventional routes, and I like to squeeze as much travel as possible out of my points. I measure redemptions against the money I would have actually spent, rather than an airline’s fake $11,000 retail fare. This is how I often end up flying an airline like Uzbekistan Airways in Seat 31B. They have a fantastic safety video, by the way.
This time, I had to be in Las Vegas for a conference. My schedule was not flexible. I had already booked a prepaid rental car, and more importantly, I was running a contest at DEF CON and had organizer obligations to deal with.
I had what looked like a perfect booking: a nonstop WestJet flight from Vancouver to Las Vegas, booked through Virgin Atlantic Flying Club for 9,000 points. I had transferred the points during a promotion, so my actual cost was even lower. For a short economy flight at exactly the time I needed it, this was about as good as it gets.
Then WestJet’s flight attendants voted to strike.
They were furious with the company, and for good reason. Under WestJet’s archaic credit-hour system, cabin crews could spend dozens of hours a month boarding passengers and sitting through delays without being paid. The strike vote passed with 99.4% support, and the union overwhelmingly rejected the company’s contract offer.
I expected them to walk. This did not feel like an empty negotiating threat, and WestJet’s labor relations were toxic enough that I did not particularly expect the flight attendants to do the company any favors.
I needed another way to Las Vegas.
Peak summer inventory was already tight. Flights from Vancouver were expensive, and most of the remaining itineraries left at 6:00 in the morning and connected somewhere. The one nonstop option that actually worked was Allegiant from Bellingham.
Bellingham to Las Vegas is a useful route to keep in the back of your mind. Search for Vancouver to Las Vegas on Expedia and it generally will not appear because the algorithms do not consider BLI a co-terminal of YVR. As far as the booking sites are concerned, Bellingham is an unrelated airport in another country. For anyone who lives near the border like we do, though, it is local.
The Allegiant flight was the only flight from the region that preserved my schedule. In US dollars, I paid $189 plus $43 to check a bag. It was more than I would normally pay, especially for Allegiant, but it got me to Las Vegas at the right time.
I also booked a fully refundable Delta award ticket for the return on August 10, in case WestJet’s network was still a mess by then.
With the Allegiant flight secured, all I had to do was cancel WestJet and get my Virgin points back. I figured this would be easy, but Virgin wanted $50.
WestJet had already issued a fee-free travel waiver because of the looming strike, but Virgin refused to honor it. Since the WestJet flight had not yet been formally cancelled, Virgin considered this a voluntary cancellation and intended to charge me $50 to redeposit the points.
I was not especially interested in paying Virgin a $50 peace-of-mind tax for a flight that probably was not going to operate, so I decided to wait.
By Friday, WestJet was proactively grounding its 737 fleet so that aircraft would not be stranded around the network when the strike started. Hundreds of flights were being cancelled. Mine, scheduled for Monday morning, stubbornly remained on the board.
WestJet had already zeroed out the economy inventory so that nobody else could buy a ticket, but the flight still showed as “Scheduled.” Until somebody or something at WestJet pushed the cancellation through, Virgin’s computers continued to treat it as a perfectly normal flight that I had simply changed my mind about taking.
The strike deadline was Sunday at 12:01 a.m. Mountain Time, which was 11:01 p.m. Pacific. My Virgin cancellation cutoff was Monday at 9:40 a.m.
This gave me a fairly narrow window in which WestJet had to cancel the flight before Virgin could keep either $50 or my points.
At 11:01 p.m. on Sunday, the strike began. I checked WestJet again. The flight still showed as scheduled.
I gave up and went to bed.
At 8:00 the next morning, I checked again. It finally said “Canceled.” Success! That made it an involuntary cancellation, so I called Virgin and asked for a full refund. The 9,000 points were redeposited without a fee.
Virgin initially wanted to keep the taxes, which was an interesting position to take on a flight that no longer existed. After some arguing, they refunded those to my card too.
I had won my fairly low-stakes game of chicken with Virgin Atlantic.
This was my first time flying Allegiant. Honestly, they were fine for what they were. It’s like flying a European low cost carrier. The seats don’t recline and everything costs extra (except for a cup of water, which is free). They put me in seat 11B instead of 31B, the flight left on time, the crew was professional, and my checked bag arrived undamaged in a reasonable amount of time. The fare was higher than I would normally have paid, but much lower than the last-minute alternatives from Vancouver, and I arrived in Las Vegas when I was supposed to.
I am still holding my original WestJet nonstop for the return on August 10. Most Canadian airline strikes end quickly once aircraft stop moving and everyone starts losing money. This one ended after 36 hours, with the union securing its duty-period premium, and I expect the network to be mostly recovered by the 10th.
I am keeping the refundable Delta reservation for now anyway.
Unlike many other situations, airlines don’t have many obligations during a labor dispute. Before WestJet cancelled my outbound flight, its proposed solution was to send me on one of their own flights through Calgary two days later at a completely different time of day. That was the cheapest solution for them, but it certainly didn’t work for me.
When you absolutely have to arrive somewhere, it helps to solve the problem before the airline gets around to solving it for you. Miles and points are particularly useful here because last-minute award bookings can be cheaper and more flexible than cash tickets. The flexibility on the return allowed me to book a backup flight on Delta. And for the outbound, even though I spent $232 all-in with Allegiant to save the trip, I was able to get my points and taxes back for the WestJet flight. More importantly, I got to Las Vegas on schedule.
If your flight gets cancelled and you’re not finding good alternatives, look at neighboring airports (even tiny ones) and see whether Allegiant or another smaller carrier flies there. You may find that there’s an unexpected option! In the meantime, I’ll see you on the road. You see me on the way to the lavatory, flying for free in Seat 31B.