Over the last month, I've been on board close to 10 planes, flying to various destinations, most of which I wouldn't call trouble-free.
Some of my flights were landing and taking off from Israel right after recent terrorist attacks, a deadly West Bank raid and a Gaza-Israel exchange of fire. Others were going in and out of Turkey just over a week after the terrible earthquakes that resulted in vast destruction and claimed over 44,000 lives in that country alone.
Some of the boardings took me to visit Russia – a country actively involved in war and, for that, constrained by global sanctions, aimed at ensuring that hardly any international flights go there and that their remaining fleet will become obsolete sooner rather than later with no proper maintenance available.
It was quite a trip. But guess what, the only transportation problems I experienced happened in Canada. It wasn't too bad, yet it was weird to go through all those places without a hiccup to then get hindered in Canada.
First, my flight from Tel Aviv to Toronto was delayed as the plane didn't leave Canada on time due to a snowstorm. (Okay, that's totally understandable; after all, it's still winter here.) But then my plane from Toronto to Regina kept being pushed back, as were a number of other Air Canada flights that night.
Nobody explained what was going on, but it looked like another mess. After 12 hours on a plane from Israel, I ended up having an eight-hour layover in Toronto and arrived in Regina at 4 a.m., tired as hell but happy to be back.
A day later, I came across an article about WestJet busing their passengers from Calgary to Regina and realized my situation wasn't bad at all. (In case you missed it, passengers there were offered an eight-hour bus ride to the Queen City as their flight was cancelled due to "unscheduled maintenance", said a WestJet letter posted on social media by Chris Henderson, who was among those affected by the situation. They were also told that no other flights were available for days.)
I also had a bad experience trying to fly from Regina to Calgary late last year. I bought the cheapest tickets, which still cost me around $800, and then the flight was delayed multiple times and then cancelled. Fortunately, I was able to board another plane within 24 hours and go on with my plans. I also almost became a part of the transportation disaster that hit North America around Christmas. Yes, it was a common problem caused by weather and other factors, but here in Saskatchewan, it played out the worst.
Unfortunately, anyone who tries travelling in Canada or internationally nowadays probably has an anecdote to tell. It's been bad ever since the pandemic. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and COVID-19 globally highlighted many of those really thin links. I'd say healthcare had the most of them and is the number one on the list of systems struggling really badly.
Transportation, freight and passenger, can easily claim the second spot. Those systems had issues prior to 2020, but what we are left with now is complete chaos. I've touched on these two areas in conversations with people from different countries, and they all say that the systems are in a serious crisis. However, what I see here in Canada and especially in Saskatchewan is nowhere close to other places.
Of course, it always can be even worse, but when we talk about Canada, we expect high-quality standards in everything, which unfortunately isn't the case right now.
While the global healthcare system will take many years to fix, as the pandemic claimed too many professionals worldwide and it takes a long time to raise new ones, at least at first glance, transportation issues feel like they should be easier to get back to normal. It's getting close to a year since most of the COVID-related restrictions were dropped.
Air travel operated okay before the pandemic, so it feels like it should be pretty realistic to expect that the companies would be getting back to how they used to be. However, it looks like the opposite is happening and we are probably not even past the pick point of the transportation crisis, at least in Saskatchewan.
I'm sure we'll get through it one day and will be able to go places fast and easy (as much as it's possible in the Prairies with our long distances). But I don't have any guesses about when it can happen.
As Air Canada narrowed their route offering, WestJet constantly struggles with staff shortages and other issues, and other companies hesitate to enter a tricky Saskatchewan air travel market, there will be more and more absurd stories about how people couldn't get where they had to be. Hopefully, it won't be like that for too long and planes in Saskatchewan won't follow the route of buses, but for now, it seems that we need to have a plan B if we actually want to get somewhere.
