Don’t Fly Flair Airlines. No Stars.
 

Airlines usually makes good to their customer when it’s their error. In the case of Flair Airlines, even their President Stephen Jones won’t respond to our claim at all; a certified letter that was signed for more than a month ago.

We were denied boarding by their gate agent on a Toronto Calgary flight because they claimed our drivers license was not enhanced. Our drivers license was indeed enhanced and we showed the government website which described and pictured our license. Was it that Flair needed to reduce passenger count, too much weight or too many passengers? We were forced to buy new tickets the next day and pay for overnight hotel. No surprise our drivers license was accepted for that flight the next day and the return as well. It cost us an extra $792.

The lesson learned and warning is that Flair lacks the ability to perform adequately or recover from its mistakes.

The Canadian Transportation Agency protects travelers against an airline denied boarding. The fines are large. Unfortunately, their process takes up to 18 months.

I suggest to everyone thinking of flying Flair Airlines that its easier, more dependable and less disruptive to just fly another airline. You could be left behind.

How about a protest using your credit card?

I never heard of this airline but the story doesn't sound good. Airlines don't need to make up excuses if they have too much weight, it cannot be too many passengers as that is a known fact. I suppose it could be luggage, but I've been on small airplanes with issues like that and they don't make up reasons to not board people based on ID. They tell you that and then I forget what they did, but on real small planes, they know about that issue.

The one thing about this story that seems really odd is that if they denied you boarding due to your ID, it sounds like you are a local Canadian and then wouldn't there be many people on that flight with the same type of ID?

Obviously you should complain about that one if your ID was ok. I presume you mean what in the US is called "Real ID". I think it is possible some people in the US don't have it in certain states because they didn't go to the trouble to get the DL renewed if it hadn't expired yet even thought they were supposed to. Or other state ID they had from the DMV.

The OP is only speculating as to why they were denied boarding, hence the comment about weight. Its a very unlikely scenario.

There are always two sides to a story, until the other side has been heard, it’s impossible to say what happened. If you’ve ever worked in customer services, you’ll know that what a customer tells you vs what actually happened are often very different.