WestJet outage strands Saskatoon residents

Hilary Kennedy shouldn't be stepping over skiffs of snow on her nightly walks.

Kennedy is one of thousands of people across the country affected by a recent WestJet outage that is stranding passengers near and far.

Instead of waking up on her Royal Caribbean cruise along the western coast of Mexico, Kennedy woke up to the effects of another blizzard after her flight was cancelled mere hours before its scheduled departure.

"I'm out that money and I'm out a vacation. I went for a walk yesterday in my parka along the white, snowy river, and it was quite depressing," Kennedy said.

"I'm still quite anxious about what I've lost and what I should be doing right now."

Kennedy and her husband were supposed to take off on Sunday morning from Saskatoon to Toronto, eventually landing in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., the cruise’s departure point.

While she slept, Kennedy received an email at 11:30 p.m. saying "something occurred" which could affect her flight, then another email arrived at 3:30 a.m. saying her flight was cancelled altogether.

"I was on the phone with them at 3:45 a.m. and I was on hold for nine and a half hours," she said. "I actually went into the airport at 6:30 a.m. and was there for a couple hours."

In an emailed statement, WestJet said more than 220 flights were cancelled because of a "cooling issue" at the company's data centre, which caused a service outage before booting back online late Saturday evening.

After spending a majority of her day on hold with customer service representatives, Kennedy was able to get a flight to Fort Lauderdale for Wednesday, two days after the ship set sail, leaving the couple out nearly $1,600.

"I woke up and just started feeling sorry for myself and realizing, 'my boat leaves in 12 hours and I'm not going to be there,'" she said. "I considered driving there and still couldn't make it on time."

Sheryn Peterson and her husband Rod have been stranded in Victoria, B.C. since Sunday when their flight to Saskatoon was cancelled. While the customer service reps have helped, trying to get a straight answer or honest explanation has been draining.

"The processes are what needs to be fixed," Peterson said. "And I think they should just shut down until they figure it out."

Peterson said she opted to enter a virtual queue for a WestJet employee to call her back until she found out there were more than 700 people in the line and another 300 scheduled to be called.

"It's a dumpster fire," she said.

Any passenger affected by the outage should be compensated, according to Gabor Lukacs, president of Air Passenger Rights, who has been harping on Canadian airlines dodging responsibility for years.

"Just because your I.T. system fails or doesn't function as it's supposed to, that's your own problem," Lukacs told CTV News over the weekend.

"Why should airlines be treated differently than any other Canadian business?"

Under Canada's Air Passenger Protections Regulations, passengers are entitled to compensation up to $1,000 if a flight delay or cancellation is within an airline's control and not required for safety reasons.

Lukacs strongly advocates for any passenger affected by the outage to seek full compensation or have WestJet cover costs associated with any delays.

While being refunded the money of her flights to and from Florida, the gesture didn't take the sting away from Kennedy's hopes of celebrating a birthday under the Mexican sun and not in the heart of the frozen prairies.

"The garbage truck was coming and getting my garbage, and my can fell over because there's so much snow. I thought, 'I'm supposed to be seeing this right now,'" she said.