How (And Why) I Got 16 Boarding Passes For One Trip

My wife and I recently returned from a trip to the Atlantic / Maritime Provinces of Canada (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island). We were there for a little less than a week, and flew into and out of Halifax International Airport (YHZ). We rented a car in Halifax and used the car to drive around to our various destinations, including a sick upgrade at a Wyndham Trademark Collection hotel in New Brunswick. Our travel day back to our home base of Cincinnati was a bit stressful and crazy, and I wanted to share a bit of the madness with you guys.

As I’ve said before, one of the two things I always tell myself when things go wrong is “at least this will make for a good blog post!” (the other one is “I am glad all my kids aren’t here with me”)

Starting With An Unreasonable Rebook From Air Canada

I wrote about this part of our trip earlier, but it started with a flight cancellation and an unreasonable rebook from Air Canada

(SEE ALSO: Why Do Airlines Do This?!? (It Made Me Miss My Flight))

(SEE ALSO: Fixing an Air Canada Aeroplan Booking (that included time travel))

We had originally been scheduled to fly back on the following itinerary

• Halifax to Toronto, leaving Halifax at 7:00 a.m. and arriving at Toronto YYZ at 8:30 a.m.
• Toronto to Cincinnati, leaving Toronto at 11:35 a.m. and arriving at Cincinnati at 1:14 p.m.

But when we woke up at 4;45 a.m. to get to the airport for our 7:00 a.m. flight, we found that our flight had been cancelled.

And even worse, we had been rebooked onto a 5:15 a.m. flight that we had no chance of making, since it was only 20 minutes away and we were still at the airport.

Stuck At The Halifax Airport

After realizing the problem, I figured that it was best to still go to the airport and try to figure it out there. In my experience, it’s almost always better to try and do this at the airport than trying to do it over the phone or email.

I was a bit annoyed with myself because I literally always check on the inbound flight for any flights that I am taking – it’s my #1 trick to tell if your flight is going to be delayed. But even though I had plenty of time to do that the night before, I didn’t. I can’t tell now if there was a problem with the inbound flight that caused our original flight to be cancelled, but I was annoyed because I didn’t even bother to check.

I didn’t realize the other mistake we made until we got to the airport. What we SHOULD have done was either printed out our boarding passes or taken a screenshot of them. We only had them in the Air Canada app, and when 5:15 came and went and we missed our flight, our in-app boarding passes disappeared, and we could no longer get past security.

That meant we had to wait in the (long) pre-security Air Canada line, along with everyone else that had missed their flight (like us), anyone dropping off bags, checking in for other flights, and anyone else needing help from Air Canada. I had Carolyn wait in the line while I tried to use my Google Voice line to call Air Canada or find someone else that might be able to help us. Even though her line moved slowly, she still “won” and got to an agent before I got off of hold 😀

I had researched some possible options, but the Air Canada agent couldn’t see most of the good ones, and was only able to put us on a flight from Halifax to Montreal that left at 12:25 p.m., connecting to Cincinnati at 6:15 p.m. After trying a few different options, we took that flight and collected (even more) boarding passes)

How We Solved The Problem (And Got Home On Time!)

But I was not ready to give up yet. Since we now had about 6 hours to kill. We considered just going back to our hotel (and actually getting to eat breakfast!) but decided to just stay at the airport. Our new boarding passes got us through security quickly, and we considered our options. The next flight that left that was heading in the right direction was a 7:15 a.m. to Ottawa (YOW), so we started walking down to that gate.

But as we did, we noticed a 6:00 a.m. flight to Toronto where the airplane was still at the gate. The boarding area was empty and it was clear that they were finishing things up, but there was still a gate agent there. I decided to see if we could get on that flight. I quickly explained the situation and the agent was super nice – he was willing to try and get us on the flight (after confirming we were both physically there and had no checked bags). At first, he couldn’t get us on our original Toronto to Cincinnati 11:35 a.m. flight, even though there would be plenty of time. He said the only other flight from Toronto to Cincinnati wouldn’t get us home till 9 p.m., after our current flight (which was scheduled to arrive in Cincinnati from Montreal at around 8 p.m.). I asked if he could just put us on those flights and we could try to get on an earlier flight when we got to Toronto. He was in the middle of trying to make that happen when he got a call from his supervisor telling him that he needed to close the flight, so we were out of luck.

Although some of the options out of Halifax were to the US (mostly to Newark on United), I realized that since we were in the domestic departures area of the Halifax airport that we wouldn’t be able to try to get on any of those unless we went through the U.S. preclearance area. Without any kind of guarantee, I figured it was better to stay on the Canada side and try to get to Montreal or Toronto which are Air Canada’s hub airports.

We walked down to the Ottawa gate (at the far end of the airport) and sat down there for awhile. There was nobody at the gate yet (it was still over an hour before it was scheduled to take off) when I got the idea to see what other flights might be possible. As we walked down to the other end of the airport, I saw there was a 6:25 a.m. to Montreal (YUL). When we got to that gate, it was also just about done boarding, but there was one other lady who was trying to get rebooked onto that flight. We joined that line, and after a bit of finagling, all 3 of us (funnily enough, her last name was also Miller) were able to get on AC2045 to Montreal.

We weren’t seated together, but it was fine. I was actually in an exit row, and Carolyn was in the literal last row of the plane, in a row to herself, so we both had decent seats. I had to wait for awhile for her to get off the plane since she was so far back, but once we were together, we walked down a long corridor before getting out into the main airport.

When we did, we found that literally the next gate over was a flight to Toronto that was in the middle of boarding. I stepped over to the gate agent and asked if there was any way we could get onto that flight. After hitting a few buttons, the agent was able to get us onto that flight, AND get us on the 11:35 a.m. flight from Toronto to Cincinnati. I’m not sure why that was not showing up for any of the other agents.

For all 3 of our flights, there were PLENTY of seats on the plane, so I am not sure why some of the agents that we talked to were not able to get us onto those flights. Maybe it was just a skill issue, or maybe there was something where some of those seats were sold to people who ended up not making the flights due to some of the same issues we ran into?

After we got to Toronto, it was smooth sailing – we got a quick bite to eat at the Plaza Premium Terminal 1 F Gates Lounge, and then made the long hike down to the far end of the F terminal (Gate F98!), where we boarded our flight to Cincinnati (exit row seats even!), and got home right on time.

The 16 Boarding Passes

Here’s my count of our 16 boarding passes

1. Our original boarding passes for AC 607 from Halifax to Toronto
2. And our original online boarding passes for AC8703 from Toronto to Cincinnati
3. Our new boarding passes for AC 601 on the 5:15 a.m. flight from Halifax to Toronto (that we missed)
4. After getting rebooked at the Halifax airport we had boarding passes for AC663 from Halifax to Montreal at 12:25 p.m.
5. And boarding passes from Montreal to Cincinnati at 6:15 p.m.
6. But then we talked ourselves onto AC2045 from Halifax to Montreal at 6:25 a.m.
7. AC403 from Montreal to Toronto
8. And then new boarding passes on AC8703 from Toronto to Cincinnati

Times 2 for the 2 of us makes 16 boarding passes for our one trip.

The Bottom Line On A Crazy Travel Day

After all the stress of getting our flight cancelled and then having to take 3 flights to get home, we ended up getting home at the same time we would have had nothing happened at all. Even though it was stressful, in some ways it was a bit “fun” to try and work the system and get us to our destination on time. And as always, I was glad I didn’t have to deal with the stress of having my whole family there (it would have also made it harder to get us on those flights though they did seem pretty empty), and hopefully it at least made for a semi-entertaining blog post :-D.

Got any crazy / stressful travel day stories to share where you ended up with a fistful of boarding passes? Leave them in the comments below.

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