Zoom woes have travel agents skittish
Discount air carrier Zoom Airlines — the only carrier with trans-Atlantic non-stops between Winnipeg and London — may be running through some turbulence with an insurance company, but it’s their passengers with bookings this summer who may be the ones left with white knuckles.
And now Zoom? Read the Max Globetrotting blog
While a Canadian-based official with the airline says a problem with an insurer in England is all a misunderstanding, Winnipeg’s Max Johnson, president and CEO of The Great Canadian Travel Company, said it has made him and other people in the travel industry skittish about the airline’s future.
Zoom Airlines: insurance woes
“I wouldn’t book a Zoom flight for anyone,” Johnson said today.
The issue arose on Monday when International Passenger Protection (IPP), a company which allows travel companies to buy Scheduled Airline Failure Insurance, placed Zoom Airlines on its list of airlines it will no longer cover.
The list includes operating airlines Olympic Airlines and Alitalia, but the last airline placed on the list on May 23, United Kingdom-based SilverJet, halted operations on May 30, affecting the travel plans of almost 10,000 passengers.
Johnson said the insurance designation “is usually not a good thing… as a tour operator, you see that and you stop booking for them.”
Johnson, who is past president of the Manitoba chapter of the Association of Canadian Travel Agents, said it doesn’t necessarily mean the airline is in danger of going under, but it still could dramatically effect travel plans if the company cuts back the number of flights and changes the flight dates of passengers.
Johnson said if a passenger doesn’t arrive at their destination when they planned, they could be on the hook for any other travel plans booked and paid for with other companies.
“The people I’m worried about are the people who are booked on Zoom to London and then another airline,” he said. “If something happens, they’ll just be out of luck.
“You just have to steel yourself.”
But David Clements, Zoom’s vice president, sales and marketing, based in Ottawa, said what he calls a misunderstanding arose when two groups of British tour travellers booked flights with Zoom and applied for insurance in the same week.
“They consider that abnormal behaviour,” Clements said.
“We are in the process of sorting it out.”
Clements said the vast majority of its bookings don’t go through IPP because most bookings aren’t with tour companies, but with individuals booking on line or through one of its agents.
“IPP probably gets one or two requests a year… they had two in a week for group bookings so they investigated it. It’s all a misunderstanding.
“I would say there are no worries. We continue to be a competitively priced airline.”
Nancy Anderson, director of the province’s Consumers Bureau, said Manitoba has no compensation fund like air or cruise travellers in Ontario have. That fund is financed by registered travel agents and wholesalers and administered by the Travel Industry Council of Ontario.
Anderson said the Manitoba government has asked the federal government to create a federal compensation fund because of the small size of the travelling public in this province.
“We have looked into it, but a compensation fund requires more resources than we as a province can do,” she said.
Anderson advises anyone who books travel online to ensure they keep all of their receipts and written documentation handy in case they need to file a claim through their credit card company.