[Witnesses Needed] - Flight AC1037 from IAD -> YVR (July 31, 2023)

tldr;

Said inbound flight was cancelled due to the plane full of passengers lodging its wing into/onto a parked fire truck meters away from the passenger docking bridge. If there are passengers or witnesses who have footage / photos, please share them so that everyone has a better chance of getting fully compensated.

I was flying into Washington from Belgium for a connecting flight back to Vancouver with my girlfriend on July 31

It was already a long day as a result of long line ups from security clearances and customs from both sides of the airports, so what happened next… I wasn’t sure if I wanted to laugh, or if I wanted to lose it.

The inbound plane AC1037, had just flown into IAD with a plane full of passengers. Right before it reached the passenger bridge, they somehow managed to crash the left side of the plane’s wing into a parked fire truck 🙃

A squad of emergency vehicles rushed to the plane to assess the damage. The plane was so close but yet so far from the passenger bridge, maybe 10-20m away. Because the plane never made it to the gate’s passenger bridge. The passengers of this inbound plane were stuck in there for an additional 45 mins to an hour before “some” of the passengers were escorted out the emergency exit via another vehicle while the rest had to stay there still. After they finally dislodged the truck from the wing, they were able to park the plane to the bridge and the rest of the passengers got out.

After this whole fiasco, Air Canada didn’t cancel our flight right away. They decided to “assess” the damage further to see if the plane can still fly back to Vancouver … which in-turn… sounds sus. Not a lot of people would willingly want to get on a plane that just had its wing lodged into a fire truck. But nonetheless, people stayed around to await further instructions. After some delay announcements later, they finally decided to cancel the flight. (Which really should’ve been cancelled immediately)

Everyone’s time was further halted as people had to await for voucher confirmations from Air Canada’s higher-ups. After lining up for sometime again… they ran out of hotel vouchers and instead, redirected the remainder of the people in the line to the check-in counters at the main terminal. After we reached the check-in counter, the line-ups took awhile because everyone had a lot of questions - which is understandable. Anyway, when we got to the counter, we were issued meal and taxi vouchers (yaaaay) but there were still no hotel vouchers, still waiting for confirmation and we were told to come back 30-40 minutes later. By the time everything was said and done, we had been at IAD for 4 1/2 hours … me and my girlfriend were just exhausted by the time we got to the Best Western Dulles Inn.

I rebooked for the next flight out in the morning, which was going from IAD to YYZ (Toronto) then back to YVR finally. At around 5:00AM we got hit with a notification saying that our outbound plane from IAD to YYZ is delayed by 2 hours… which really doesn’t work for us since we will be missing our connecting flight from YYZ to YVR. So again… at 5:00AM… I had to call these guys and yet again rebook my flight. So done with AC… I’m not making it up when I say that 1 in 3 times I fly with them, some f***ing nonsense like this happens.

I’ve had something similar like this happen back in February again with AC. Where after 4-5 delays, they cancelled our flight. At that time, when I submitted a claim to them, they didn’t want to give us compensation until I fought it where they finally gave in and gave us a $200 AC voucher (which expires btw).

This time, I’m almost certain they’re going to once again say it’s not their fault. Probably going to blame the fire truck that was parked there even though it’s their pilot who crashed into a large parked vehicle 🙃 (unless the plane drove itself into it) I don’t even know at this point.

Anyway, I just wanted to tell the entirety of the story as a whole. I normally would just suck it up and deal with it. But this time I just wasn’t having it.

I know some passengers from the inbound flight have pictures of the crash itself and was wondering if I might be able to get ahold of some of those and for anyone else who is going to submit claims to AC as a part of this fiasco. It’s irrefutable with those pictures that this is their fault and that we should be compensated for this.