Colville Lake, N.W.T., resident says excess bags keep being bumped from arriving flights

A resident of Colville Lake, N.W.T., says passengers’ excess baggage keeps getting bumped from flights arriving in the community and often leave people waiting days for it to come in.

Joseph Kochon says he flew on Nov. 22 and brought three pieces of luggage, one that was checked as regular luggage and the rest was considered overage, or excess. 

He said he paid over $450 for baggage, and as of Friday was still waiting for his suitcase and cooler to arrive. 

Kochon said the issue of cargo being bumped from flights happens to community members with regularity and that it’s affecting the cost of living. 

“A lot of money just to buy the food in our community. So we get the luxury of buying the stuff we really need from Yellowknife and then to get it bumped, it just defeats the whole purpose of buying stuff for your family,” he said. 

“Everybody paid a lot of money for the bags and they’re just not getting their bags.” 

North-Wright Airways is the only airline that flies into Colville Lake and it has a 60 pound limit on combined  baggage. This means anyone flying with over 60 pounds has to pay extra and it’s not guaranteed the additional weight will make it on the same flight as the passenger to reach its destination. 

If it doesn’t make it on the initial flight, it’s supposed to arrive whenever there is space on another flight arriving in the community.

But in Colville Lake’s case, there are only three flights a week.

Kyle Newhook, the operations manager of North-Wright Airways, confirmed in an email that a client didn’t have their overage baggage travel on the same day or the next available flight. 

“This particular person did in fact receive their baggage on the day of travel; however they checked in excess baggage on the same day which did not travel,” he wrote.

“The excess baggage which was checked in and processed on Friday did not travel Monday due to a full load.” 

Newhook said the baggage was listed to have flown out on Wednesday, but Kochon said it hasn’t arrived yet.

Newhook acknowledged in an email that the limited flights to the community means “cargo delays could be slightly longer than average.”

He said North-Wright, like all airlines, has weight restrictions and charges extra for anything over that. He added passengers are bringing more cargo than usual this year.

“This year has been quite unique with no barge and now a Canada post strike which means every passenger is bringing more baggage than normal to compensate, especially with Christmas around the corner.”

Newhook said that North-Wright has added some additional flights that will run right up until Christmas Eve to try to assist passengers with excess baggage. 

“We also have an additional machine on standby just to assist where need be, that being said I would say that there is an excess amount of excess coming through the system, due to the reasons previously listed.” 

Kochon said he feels that North-Wright needs larger aircraft to accommodate the amount of cargo residents want to bring to the community. 

He said if it keeps happening, the community may try and find a new supplier. 

Newhook said that increasing the aircraft size is “a natural next step” for the airline, but that doing so would take time. 

“This is not an easy task and takes an extreme amount of time, money and resources.”