Couple says they're out thousands of dollars after Flair Airlines left them stranded in Las Vegas
A Vancouver-area woman and her husband are out thousands of dollars after a nightmare experience with a Flair Airlines flight.
Rachel Thexton was headed home from a weekend trip in Las Vegas with her partner, Angel Valdez.
The couple was eager to return home to their children after a few days away.
Thexton, who owns and operates her own PR firm in Vancouver, told Daily Hive that their check-in process went smoothly after they arrived at Harry Reid International Airport about two-and-a-half hours ahead of their flight, which was scheduled to depart Las Vegas at 7:20 pm on April 27.
The check-in process went smoothly, but when they arrived at the gate, Thexton noted that the area was crowded.
“The gate was completely jammed. There wasn’t even room to sit on the floor,” she said, recalling it was a very busy Saturday night at the airport.
She and Valdez decided to wait at a gate next to their assigned gate instead.
She noted there was a “partition” between both gates, and Valdez kept going back and forth to check the flight status “even though [they] were listening very carefully to the announcements.”
Thexton said Valdez also spoke with the gate agent, letting them know they were sitting at the next gate over, waiting for any relevant updates on their flight and when boarding would start.
Their flight kept getting pushed back until it was delayed about 2.5 hours, Thexton recalled.
Not long after, her husband walked back over to the gate and to his shock, “nobody was there,” Thexton claimed.
“We’re, like, ‘what the hell is going on? This is crazy,'” she said.
Thexton and her husband were baffled and wondered whether the flight was cancelled altogether or if it had left without them. They said they did not receive any phone or email notifications from Flair about a cancellation, and their names hadn’t been called on the public address system.
She called the airport’s customer service line and was allegedly told there was “no record” of her booking for that flight.
Still confused, the couple decided to go down to the baggage area to see if they could at least find their bags.
“We thought maybe we’re just late to this… that the flight was cancelled and everyone got their bags and left, or [the flight] had left,'” she said.
“It’s like the flight didn’t exist, it was very bizarre. We thought we were hallucinating.”
The couple was left stranded with no choice but to rebook their flight home with Air Canada for the next morning, which cost them about $2,000 in total.
Thexton said they took an Uber to the nearest hotel, where they stayed until they could return to the airport the next morning.
The PR professional estimates the whole ordeal cost her and her husband around $3,000 with the new tickets and paying for overnight accommodation.
What happened to the Flair flight?
According to the flight tracking website Flight Aware, Flair Flight 1877 was delayed by one hour and 26 minutes. It arrived in Vancouver at 11:43 pm PST on April 27.
Flight Aware/ Screenshot
After they arrived back in Vancouver, Thexton and her husband called Flair customer support. The couple suspected that the airline had overbooked the flight and had cut them from boarding, but they were looking for a full explanation from Flair.
Thexton said the Flair customer representative they spoke with informed them that the couple had “never checked into the flight” and the airline had no record of their check-in.
The PR consultant refutes this claim.
“I have boarding passes, I have bag tickets, I have pictures of my bag sitting on the carousel. I have a million documents possible to show that we checked in in advance,” she said.
She shared copies of these documents with Daily Hive.
Rachel Thexton/ Supplied
Thexton, whose legal name is Rachel Joy Degraw, noted that her name was misspelled on her Expedia booking for the trip. However, that error did not impact check-in and was corrected on her boarding pass.
Disappointing customer service
Thexton and her husband were extremely disappointed with Flair’s customer service when they tried to resolve the matter over the phone.
But the issues didn’t end there.
Thexton had also posted about the ordeal on X on the night of April 27, when she was still trying to figure out what happened with the flight.
She tagged Flair Airlines in the post, hoping to alert customer support directly. She did get some responses that initially appeared to be from a Flair representative.
Thexton DM’d the account in a panic, hoping Flair would get her some answers. Upon a closer look, it turns out it was a spam account masquerading as the airline with a fake username made to look like a real Flair account.
Luckily, she didn’t give the spam account any credit card information, but she did provide them with her name, address, email, and birthday when she initially believed she was direct messaging with a Flair rep.
Rachel Thexton/ X
Thexton said that her message receiving comments from spam accounts pretending to be Flair is a “widespread epidemic of poor customer service to the max.”
“That’s an indication when scammers have realized this, and multiple of them are stepping in to ‘help’ customers for a company that is known not to respond to issues,” she said.
Rachel Thexton/ X
Rachel Thexton/ X
Thexon has also tried to make a compensation claim on Flair’s website but has been prevented from entering the claim’s webpage by a recurring technical issue.
I usually don’t take corporate complaints this far but this is getting deeper and disturbing. Here is me trying to make a compensation complaint via @flairairlines website. pic.twitter.com/oI3jAiSFhm
— Rachel Thexton (@rthexton) April 30, 2024
Thexton said she is looking to make an official complaint about the airline.
“It’s one thing to be late or charge for a carry-on, but it’s a whole other thing to spend $3,000 and be a day late to be home to your kids,” she said.
“When things happen with a company basically saying ‘to hell with a customer’… or ‘we’re not going to care about our customers,’ then that’s when it becomes bothersome and not ok for me.”
Flair responds
In an email statement to Daily Hive, Flair noted it “thoroughly investigated the incident with customer care associates as well as the gate agents at the airport.”
According to the airline, boarding announcements were made.
“While we acknowledge the inconvenience experienced by passengers for all flight disruptions, it’s essential to clarify that the delay on F81877 on April 27th was due to an uncontrollable event, impacting the departure time to 21:17 [pm] vs. the initially scheduled time of 19:30 [pm]” said a Flair representative.
These changes were communicated via two emails and SMS notifications sent to passengers. Thexton confirmed to Daily Hive that she received these communications about the delays.
When the flight was ready to board, a gate agent made the boarding announcements, stated the airline.
The Flair representative noted that the announcement system at the Las Vegas airport has two options, one that makes announcements in the gate area and one that relays messages to the full airport system.
“Final boarding calls or gate changes go through the larger system. In this case, the airport staff reported they used the larger airport system to page the passengers by name,” said the airline.
“Despite these efforts, these passengers failed to reach the gate on time. We understand the frustration caused by missed flights and the subsequent inconvenience. However, in this instance, we exhausted all channels to communicate regular updates with all passengers.”
Flair said it takes responsibility for “any shortcomings post-incident” in the interaction that Thexton and her husband had with its customer care agent.
“It’s imperative for us to ensure that all passengers are provided with helpful and supportive assistance. We apologize for this and remain committed to delivering on-time and reliable service.”
Thexton expressed her disappointment in Flair’s claims.
“I was listening so carefully, as was my husband, to the announcements that I could list the flights that left during that time period. We heard absolutely no mention of our flight, any Flair Airlines flight or our name and we were listening so carefully, ” she told Daily Hive in an updated statement.
“We were so keen to get home and also reminded the gate agent [a couple of times] that we were not at the gate and he assured us that the announcement would be made so we were listening very carefully. It’s just unfortunate they are claiming this in order to justify what happened.”
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