Good Evening All
It seems Big Red has been very busy which shows they care very deeply in what is happening:
Update 4: Fort McMurray Wildfires
May 7, 2016
Evacuation charters:
As of today, Air Canada and Jazz will have operated 20 charter flights, evacuating more than 1,400 people to Edmonton and Calgary, with more flights tomorrow.
More seats departing Alberta:
Air Canada continues to add additional capacity from Edmonton across Canada to get people home from Northern Alberta and to date including evacuation charters, we have added more than 3,600 seats. We continue to actively manage this and add additional capacity daily as required.
Assisting to deliver medical supplies:
We are working with Global Medic to deliver medical and other supplies to Alberta.
Waiving pet, hunting equipment, bag fees:
We are waiving pet carriage fees as well as handling fees for weapons/hunting equipment, surf equipment and bikes for passengers who are in the process of evacuating from affected areas.
Baggage fees are waived for passengers travelling to or from affected areas. Customers who have checked-in online, via their mobile device or via a kiosk at the airport should submit a request for refund of baggage fees via Customer Relations once their travel is complete.
For customers originally booked to fly to/from Fort McMurray, Fort St. John, Edmonton, Calgary
A flexible rebooking policy remains in place to enable passengers to change their flights without charge, space permitting for flights departing or arriving affected areas. Customers are requested to check the status of their flights on aircanada.com.
Lowest fares remain available:
Contrary to allegations in social media, fares were not raised in response to this devastating situation. In some cases, customers booking last minute on May 3 and 4 on flights from Fort McMurray and Edmonton have paid premium fares. This was a result of Air Canada’s computerized revenue management system, which automatically manages fares. Regrettably, we were unable to intervene in advance to manually adjust fares and in those instances we’re contacting customers who paid a premium to adjust the fare to the normally available, lowest advance fare and refund the difference. Steps have been taken to manually manage fares on aircanada.com to ensure the lowest advance fares remain available for all passengers travelling as a result of the wildfires.
Red Cross aid
We are thinking of the people in Fort McMurray, which includes our own employees and employees of our Air Canada Express partner Jazz who live in this community. The Air Canada Foundation has made a $50,000 donation to the Canadian Red Cross to assist with relief efforts.
All Fort McMurray scheduled flights remain cancelled due to airport operating restrictions as a result of the wildfires. We remain ready to operate flights into Fort McMurray as soon as scheduled flights are able to resume.
Updates will be continue to be provided on aircanada.com.