‘I thought this was a mistake,’ said Andrew Korchacov said. ‘I cannot spend a week of my life flying. It doesn’t make sense’
Getting home after a quick trip to Las Vegas almost turned into a multi-day odyssey through four states and provinces for a couple from Terrace, B.C.
Andrew Korchacov, 44, and his wife, 42, left their home in the west-central B.C. city on Monday, Nov. 4, on a WestJet flight for a week in Vegas. They planned to return the following Sunday, with a late-night flight from Vegas to Vancouver, and then a second leg the next day into Terrace. They’d be home in plenty of time to get to work on Tuesday.
It didn’t turn out that way.
Korchacov’s first inkling that something was amiss happened when they were already at the Las Vegas airport, about two and a half hours before their flight. His phone buzzed with the notification that it had been cancelled. Then it showed he had been rebooked.
But while the original itinerary through Vancouver would have taken them home in about 25 hours, including a single lengthy layover, the new path was decidedly more circuitous.
First, a noon flight the next day from Las Vegas to San Francisco. Two hours later, a second flight into Vancouver, where they’d be on the ground for 52 hours. Finally, at 10 p.m. Wednesday, a 90-minute flight east to Calgary. The next morning, the final leg of the journey into Terrace. Total travel time: a shade under 72 hours.
“I thought this was a mistake,” Korchacov told the National Post. “I cannot spend a week of my life flying. It doesn’t make sense.”
He joined a line of passengers at the WestJet check-in desk to get some answers.
“First of all they were rude to me,” he said. “They said: Well, you got your ticket rebooked. What do you want? I said: What do I want? I want to get home.”
He said he told the representative he would pay more to get back sooner, certain there was a faster way. “She said you get what you get, and if you cause any trouble, we’re going to call security on you,” he recalled. “Basically she told me to go away.”
He doesn’t recall who he spoke to at the gate. “My state of mind was so disturbed that I didn’t pay attention to the name tags if there were any,” he said. “In hindsight I should have.”
Korchacov and his wife eventually spent $3,050 on an Air Canada ticket that took them from Las Vegas to Portland, then Vancouver and finally Terrace. “Just to get home Monday,” he said, which they did, at about 4 p.m., a mere 18 hours or so after their ordeal began. Both he and his wife had work the following morning.
“I just did what I did” to get home, he said. “If I had to walk I would walk. If I had to drive I would drive.”
According to Google Maps, a road trip directly from Las Vegas to Terrace would have taken approximately 36 hours. Even to drive WestJet’s path, including a detour into Alberta, would have taken about 48 hours on the road.
As of Monday evening, Korchacov said he had not yet heard from the airline himself. “I’m still waiting for a reply.”
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