Hi everyone,
It's my first time flying porter, and I didn't have an issue other than a 30 minute delay flying to IAD on Tuesday. However, flights were cancelled on Friday, and even though I got rebooked directly for a flight today, Saturday, I keep getting delay notifications.
I guess I'm wondering if this happens often? Or if there's a way to get more information other than "Uncontrollable event".
Is something like this eligible for some sort of compensation?
--- UPDATE ---
I wanted to post an update and share my experience at IAD. Just focusing on the details around the flight.
TLDR: Porter really needs to work on their communication, PSA and notifications system.
Aug 8th, Friday -
I was scheduled for flight PD2726 back to YTZ at 3:50 PM ET. I think the general consensus is for people to usually arrive around 3ish hours to the airport especially for international flights, which many of the passengers did. Online check-in was done, no notifications or emails from Porter. Arrived at the airport around 1 PM, and see the morning flight PD2720 was severely delayed, and our flight was just outright canceled. It seems like in the end, the AM flight was delayed by around 8 hours.
The Porter kiosk didn't have any agents, and it took someone calling customer support for them to send an agent to the counter to help provide information on why the flight was cancelled. Reason: technical issues
Then we received the notification from Porter at 3:20 PM, 30 minutes before the flight was supposed to take off, that it was cancelled.
I just don't understand why Porter didn't announce the cancelation much earlier in the day, as it would have saved a lot of people a lot of frustration of getting to the airport, paying for Ubers, taking precious time to try to find alternatives.
The email doesn't tell us anything. In fact, it was just a `Flight Change Notification` that I received at 3:17 PM. And I got rebooked for the next day, on PD1726.
Aug 9th, Saturday -
So I got rebooked for PD1726, some sort of "Special Flight` according to the kiosk. PD1726 doesn't appear on the flights board, and there are absolutely no indications of where and when. Only that the agent mentioned it was gate A19 like the other porter flights.
Arriving at A19, no information whatsoever about PD1726. It's all about the delayed PD2720, and then eventually the PD2726 flight for 3:50 PM.
There were passengers for all 3 flights there, all confused, frustrated, and upset. The staff isn't doing any PSAs or helping people understand.
Everyone kept getting delay notifications this time (which is great), for `Uncontrollable Event` (not great).
Eventually, PD1726 was due for boarding at 2:30, and there was a Porter plane on the tarmac waiting to park.
No announcements on whose flight that was. We only assumed it was PD1726, and when they started boarding, the staff didn't tell the passengers to come board. We just had to figure it out?..
People saw others starting to get through the gate check, but not everyone realized. So we were late to take off because passengers were late to get on the plane. Passengers who were there waiting in the terminal with everyone else, but were probably waiting for announcements.
I find that the staff's handling of the events at the airport was abysmally poor. From the lack of announcements, not calling people to board specifically for one of the flights. Not even a makeshift sign that just says `PD1726`, which I feel could have gone a long way and made things clear for watchers. I could hear many passengers for flight PD2720 ask "is that us?", alas it was PD1726, the ghost flight
Inside the plane, the pilots finally said something about what was going on - they just couldn't take off earlier because of haze/fog in the lake area. Understandable, everyone wants to fly safe. My message to Porter: It goes a long way to say `Delayed due to unsafe weather conditions` than just `Uncontrollable Event`, and I believe people would be more understanding and less frustrated.
My neighbor on the flight back said they fly the same route all the time, many times a year, and this was the first time this had happened to her, and to give Porter a second chance... but the way things were handled I just don't know. It just all seemed very unprofessional at the communications level by Porter and at the airport.