Former National Hockey League player Ryan Whitney blasted Toronto Pearson International Airport and Air Canada for the chaotic handling of cancelled flights and delays, which left him stranded at the airport overnight.
The former professional hockey player for the Pittsburgh Penguins was heading to Boston, Massachusetts, from Edmonton on Sunday when his connecting flight in Toronto was cancelled, leaving him stuck at the airport until Monday morning.
Whitney said he landed in Toronto at roughly 3 p.m. on June 5 and after waiting in line for three hours to get through customs, he was told that his connecting flight to Boston had been cancelled.
“At this point now, I go and I see there is a 400-person line with two Air Canada workers,” he said. “There’s a million cancelled flights, everyone’s just panicking.”
After waiting in that line for nearly six hours, Whitney said Air Canada closed the counter when it was near his turn, and remaining customers were told to find assistance elsewhere.
“This is the worst airport on Earth. I’m telling you there’s no other airport like this,” he said.
Whitney said he then had to re-enter through Canadian customs, and by the time he got through it was already 1 a.m. When he tried to arrange a JetBlue flight to Buffalo, he said Air Canada wouldn’t allow him to retrieve his luggage, and he was instead told that another flight had been booked for him in the morning.
But when he arrived nearly four hours early for that flight, Whitney was again told that his trip had been rearranged, and that it would depart in just 15 minutes and that he wouldn’t make it.
