'Disappointed' N.W.T. girls miss first day of Bell Capital Cup hockey tournament
'A whole bunch of us were crying because we were really looking forward to this'
Five peewee girls hockey players from Fort Smith were devastated after discovering they wouldn't be playing hockey on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Thursday. The girls won the Hockey on the Hill contest and had been looking forward to the tournament since October.
The winners of the contest are flown to Ottawa to play in the Bell Capital Cup tournament on the Canada 150 rink on Parliament Hill. But the girls missed out on the first day, because of a delayed flight.
"A whole bunch of us were crying because we were really looking forward to this," said Anais Aubrey-Smith, one of the hockey players.
The players are from Fort Smith, and had to take three flights to get to Ottawa. But their flight on Wednesday from Fort Smith to Hay River was delayed.
"We went mechanical, so we got another plane ready but that took about an hour," said Brian Harrold, owner of Northwestern Air Lease.
The second flight was from Hay River to Yellowknife. It was operated by First Air.
Originally First Air said they would be able to delay the flight and wait for the girls, but in the end the delay was not made.
"We were prepared to wait for 25 minutes past scheduled departure, but we would have needed to wait for more than an hour to have them make the flight which would have affected further operations that day for other communities," said Dan Valin, manager of marketing and communications for First Air, in an email.
Because the girls missed their flight, Northwestern Air Lease planned to fly them to Yellowknife. But Harrold said he contacted Air North, the airline flying to Ottawa from Yellowknife, and was told the girls wouldn't have made it in time to make the connection.
Fees waived for new flight
This left the girls with no way to get to Ottawa to play their first two games.
Team coach Laura Aubrey is "really disappointed" with the way the airlines worked together. She said the team would have been able to make the flight if Air North and First Air had been more accommodating and delayed their flights.
The captain of the Air North flight was not available for comment as to why he did not delay the flight, but a Air North spokesperson said the airline had "accommodated the passengers by rebooking on today's [Thursday's] flight and waiving all fees."
"I think that's totally unacceptable," said Aubrey. "For some of these girls this is the only opportunity to go to a national level competition like this, so you can imagine the disappointment."
The hockey games scheduled to be played on the Parliament Hill ice rink were moved indoors because of extremely cold weather. The team wasn't aware of this at the time of the flight.