I think when you read this blog we will be sound asleep back in Canada, well as I write this that is what it appears, and what we are praying, will happen.
We arrived in Palm Springs around 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, checked in for our flight, got our boarding passes, and looked forward to an evening catching up with hubby’s relatives. And things went well until 7:30 p.m. when I happen to go into the WestJet app and saw that our flight had been cancelled … WHAT? No warning and if I hadn’t looked we wouldn’t have known until we received an email this morning. But check I did and that led me to get on the phone to WestJet to try and rebook our flights, at first I received voice mails saying they were too busy to talk to me and they hung up on me. Finally I was able to get through, around 8:00 p.m. Wednesday evening, and I was kept on hold for 6:15:22 hours until 2:09 a.m. when an agent answered the phone.

During my time on hold hubby found an article saying international flights were not allowed to land at Vancouver International Airport. The reason was they needed time to clear stranded planes off the runway and they were giving priority to flights within Canada.
So when the agent answered the phone I asked if we could fly through Calgary instead and yes that was an option but he could not get us a connecting flight to Kelowna. That’s okay I replied we were happy to spend time with our youngest son and his family and carry on to Kelowna when a flight became available. Before he looked at routing us that way he said he wanted to check other airlines to see if he could get us into Kelowna before Christmas. Well two hours on hold, with him checking back in twice to say he was still working on it, and it was now after 4:00 a.m., I had been on the phone for 7:59:03 hours when I heard that dreaded click and I was cut off. But that was okay because I had given the agent my number in case that happen and of course he would immediately call me back … Not! So hubby and I both dialed back and got on hold again, 3:16:57 hours later I was once again disconnected but hubby was still in the queue and after several tries I was able to get back in the queue.
We had pretty much resigned ourselves to heading back and spending Christmas in Yuma. From what we could see there were no flights to Calgary left and nothing to Kelowna until well after Christmas, but we weren’t ready to hang up yet. So through breakfast, coffee, chatting, and getting texts from our son saying he could see flights from Palm Springs to Calgary, we listened for someone to answer our call. Let me tell you thirteen hours of WestJet hold music is painful and we had spent the entire night awake listening to it!
I told hubby he would probably get through at the 6 hour mark but he was luckier than me and at 5:30:25 hours an agent answered the phone. The first thing hubby asked was did she have our number and would she promise to call us back if we got cut off and yes she said she would. Unlike the agent in the middle of the night she immediately put a hold on two seats to Calgary Thursday evening. Once she had done that she put us on hold and went to work trying to get us the best flights. I think it was another hour and lots of work and back and forth but after 14.5 hours we had flights to Calgary and flights to Kelowna on December 26th … we are happy we get to spend Christmas with our two youngest grandchildren and we will still get to see the rest of the family after Christmas. This was our year for Christmas with our daughter and her family but it just didn’t work out … hopefully next year … but in the meantime our son and daughter-in-law are very excited to have us spend Christmas with them. Our daughter-in-law said they were not going to tell our grandchildren we are coming, she wants to surprise them in the morning but it’s probably a good idea because at this point who knows if this will all work out and we will arrive after they are in bed anyways …but if, as this blog started, we are snuggled in bed sleeping in Calgary there will be some happy little people and happy old people enjoying snuggles this morning 🙂

Until next time …
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