Good morning, Mr. Chair.
Thank you very much to members of this committee for having us here today. My name is Andy Gibbons. I'm the vice-president of external affairs at WestJet. I am joined today by two of my colleagues—Captain Scott Wilson, who is our vice-president of operations, and Jared Mikoch-Gerke, who is our director of government relations and regulatory affairs.
We are here today to take questions on public policy, operations and the APPR. You have questions, and we are here to give you and Canadians answers.
I'd like to begin by speaking directly to our guests who are listening today: We thank you for choosing our company for your travel and thank you for your patience during a period that was stressful to us all.
Our record and success over 26 years is because of you. Everyone in our organization knows this and lives by it. Every single WestJetter feels the weight and anguish of not being able to meet your travel expectations.
I also want to offer a sincere thank you to our incredible WestJetters and contract service providers across the country and our network who worked long hours and extra days and gave up time with their families to support our guests during what was the most challenging winter season experienced in Canada in recent memory. Thank you.
This was a once-in-a-generation event. We experienced record cold and freezing rain driven by winds more typical of a hurricane.
On December 23, Canada's busiest travel day of the year, all but one province received extreme weather advisories. This is not a normal Canadian winter.
WestJet proactively took many additional steps over and above our regulatory obligations to help our guests. We offered a full refund for anyone who wanted to cancel their travel in advance. We offered three nights of hotels at our expense for any guest stranded mid-journey in a connection city. We completely opened our flexible change and cancel guidelines and absorbed hotel cancellation fees for our vacation guests.
Additionally, our corporate and frontline staff stepped in and stepped up to work across our system in service of our guests. We worked with our service partners and labour groups to provide incentives and bonuses to our frontline employees in acknowledgement of the work they were doing in a situation that none of us, or them, created.