January 7, 2018

   As mentioned in yesterday’s blog, we had more delays in Toronto.  The Customs and Immigration process went quickly, since our plane was the only one landing at the time. However, things ground to a halt at the baggage claim area.  There was a problem unloading the luggage.  When the sign at the carousal, where our luggage was to come out, indicating our flight number was turned off, 75 minutes after the plane landed, only about one third of the passengers had collected their bags, the rest of us were still waiting. An hour and 45 minutes after we landed, we finally had our suitcases, but there were still people waiting. We walked to the connecting flights gate.  Another line and it was another 20 minutes to get to the front, because a lot of people had to be rescheduled.  We were given our new boarding passes for the 9 p.m. flight – it was 11 a.m. in the morning.  Any earlier flights were full. But, we needed to get in another line for 25 minutes to get baggage tags for the flight and then place our luggage on the conveyor belt to the basement to be saved to be put on the later flight. Our next stop was airport security, which usually is, at least, a 30-minute line.  What a surprise – no line! 

    Now at noon, almost three hours since leaving the plane, we were ready for a coffee and muffin before walking some laps. Then we sat and updated the blog and checked emails on good Wi-Fi.         Steps 5,696

   At 4:30 pm, we checked the departures board for the gate for our flight and found that our 9 p.m. flight was cancelled!  We had thought that we would be home by noon, then postponed to midnight.  We had passed Customer Service during our laps, so off we went for a short line. The Air Canada system was still rebooking the flight so we returned half an hour later to find that we now had a 1 p.m. flight tomorrow!  BUT, we might get on the 7 p.m. flight on stand-by, but our luggage might not get to Winnipeg until tomorrow AND IF we get to Winnipeg tonight we will need to complete some claim forms so that the luggage can be delivered to us tomorrow. The ticket agent mentioned that operations were chaotic since before Christmas and the cold below seasonal temperatures and wind and storms in Vancouver and the northeastern states was playing havoc with schedules, delayed or cancelled flights.

    All this turmoil, because yesterday’s flight from Buenos Aires was well over three hours delayed; What a domino effect!         Steps 13,673

   We had planned to try one of the restaurants in the domestic terminal, for dinner, but there was no time so we went to the Tim Hortons Express by the gate for the 7 p.m. flight.  We had a cookie and coffee. We were on the stand-by list and were two of a dozen people who were hoping to get on the flight and we all succeeded!

   Once onboard, there was a delay to load luggage, so we hoped that our luggage would be on the plane.  Then since it had started to snow and the temperature in Toronto was -14C the plane needed to be deiced. Finally, we took off at 7:25 p.m. for the 2.25 hour flight.

    Our luggage was on the carousal, but we spoke to the Baggage Claim agent and he said that the past three weeks had been chaotic and things were almost back to normal for the beginning of January after the holidays.

   For dinner, we bought coffee and bagels at Tim Hortons by the Baggage Claims area and bought a yogurt parfait and two more bagels for tomorrow’s breakfast. Then took a taxi and were finally home by 10 p.m.  It had been 41 hours since we got off the ship and we had maybe dosed on the plane for three or four hours.     Tomorrow will be laundry