thousands of Travelers are up in the air as Air Canada continues to prepare for a possible pilot strike as soon as this weekend and a lot of people have taken to social media to actually vent their frustrations one example my 70-year-old parents are taking a once in a lifetime trip to Europe This is their last chance to do this because of my mom's health can you at least can you at least pretend that you care about your customers so uh you know this is what we're hearing travel expert CLA Nell joins us from Vancouver this morning as we just read frustrations are at a boiling point Claire what does Air Canada what do Air Canada customers need to know well I can attest that that is just one of literally hundreds of stories that have shown up in my inbox people are frustrated um and people need to know a couple of things I am seeing people caught on a a couple of points first of all Air Canada Express is not affected and any code share flights on are not affected as long as you are not on Air Canada flights so you might have an Air Canada flight number but you might be on one of the Star Alliance Partners United or Lanza the Goodwill policy that you and I chatted about uh weeks ago came into effect on August the 27th and what we're seeing is more and more people actually taking advantage of it the time frame where you can change flights is between September the 15th and September 23rd and we're seeing people actually do this now because they may need to get somewhere whether it's important meetings or weddings or the stories that I've heard of people trying to get to cruises or tours so what that means is that people can go into their Air Canada file either by going to aircanada.com action or their mobile uh their app that's on their mobile device and see what options are available if you've got a fully refundable Fair we're seeing a lot of people just take advantage of that get the refund but there are a lot of people who have non-refundable fairs and those people have a a couple of choices they can either fly before the date of September 15th or after September the 23rd if they have that flexibility if they can't we're seeing some people take a credit and then book a flight on their own at their own expense and then leave that credit to be used later lot of people can't do that they really have no choice they have to fly during those times and they also don't have money on their credit card to be able to buy a fully refundable Fair as a plan B and those people will have to wait to see what happens if a lockout or a strike is actually announced and then they'll be notified by Air Canada and at that time if their flight's affected they will get a full refund but this is a a terrible situation I'm kind of calling it limbo Hill for for literally tens of thousands of people right now and can you quantify for us a CL just the impact that this would have on Travelers and customers right around the world if Air Canada comes to a grinding halt the numbers are staggering um it's 110,000 people a day that typically fly on Air Canada there are 670 flights a day uh people that are going to be all over the world they fly to 47 countries on six continents so the the the scale of this would be massive not just with people but also with cargo and I know that Air Canada is going to try and protect passengers but there will be a priority a priority they will look for people who are actually in destination so mid travel they'll also be looking for people with mobility issues unaccompanied miners so I do encourage people to use technology to to check their options rather than trying to call through the lines will be jammed uh should something happen on as early as September the 15 all right good advice thank you Claire thanks for the update