Our adventure begins with late planes, no luggage…
Vacations always come with unexpected problems and surprises. Our flight from Ottawa was at 6:00 AM. For the first time I was on a plane that needed de-icing. We taxied to an area marked with signs like “Contact the iceman”. They sprayed the wings with chemicals until they turned a fluorescent green. This put the flight behind by 30 minutes. That was our first concern. We had a tight connection in Toronto and now it was looking very problematic.
Thank goodness there are no speed controls up in the skies, no officers to pull you over and ticket you. Our pilot made up the 30 minutes and we arrived on time. Our flight from Toronto to Vancouver was late leaving too but made up time and landed in Vancouver early. Unfortunately our gate was occupied so we sat and waited, and waited, until we finally arrived at the gate late. Again more concern because we have another tight connection. We arrived at the gate as boarding started. No problem, we’ll make it to Kelowna – but will our luggage?
We arrive in Kelowna and wait for the baggage to come. I get my bag and we wait. Nothing else is coming. Dave’s bag and both of our ski bags don’t appear. We fill out missing baggage claims and we are told they will be delivered to us the next day. We can’t understand how 1 of 4 pieces made it and the rest didn’t? Dave phones the number on the claim in case our bags arrived on the last flight of the day. We are told they did not and will be shipped overnight.
We find out that the plane from Vancouver can hold only 1/10th of the baggage of the plane we arrived on. Since almost eveyone flying to Kelowna are coming to ski it seems they will be over-taxed with luggage. The girl is very co-operative and explains that 325 bags did not make it to Kelowna. They ended up trucking the bags overnight.
The driver phones us at 10:00 AM and delivers our bags to the door. He seems to know the area well and finds us easily. It must be that they do this probably every day.
If you are ever flying into Kelowna get a direct flight from Ottawa or Toronto!