YLW NEWS
STARS ALIGN WITH YLW TEAMWORK JENELLE HYNES, YLW
Back in the day a Grade 11 Biology field trip involved a school bus and a zoo. But nowadays easier access to more exciting destinations allows teachers who think outside the box to give their students a new way to explore the class curriculum. Mr. Darren Wishlow teaches the grade 11 Marine Biology class at Kelowna Senior Secondary (KSS) and has been taking his students to Hawaii as a part of the program for 8 years, giving his students a real visual and hands-on underwater experience in an ocean teeming with marine life.
But this January, instead of being on their flight headed to Hawaii via Seattle, 25 students and two teachers found themselves stranded at YLW. Poor weather conditions caused flight cancellations in and out of Seattle the day before so the early morning Alaska Airlines flight that was to arrive the night before from Seattle never arrived for the 6 am departure from YLW.
The other passengers booked on that morning flight were immediately taken care of and rebooked on a flight later that day, but rebooking a group of 27 on one flight to a destination that is at the peak of its travel season was a more
challenging task. The hotel was booked and paid for and so were the excursions; the students had taken part-time jobs, fundraised or asked family members to help pay for the trip – losing out on any part of this once-in-a-lifetime experience was not a popular option. There was no opportunity to fly the group out together on any flight; flights heading to Hawaii were booked full. They would need to be split up and flown out over the following couple of days, a far from ideal situation.
What happened next could probably never happen again. Thanks to an empty Air Canada Express aircraft that was parked on the Kelowna apron due to a mechanical issue the day before and would be flying to Calgary empty at 9 am, a patient and helpful Alaska Airlines service agent Andrea Brygin, the quick thinking Air Canada Jazz agent Catherine Buffie-Carter and the team was able to work together to find a solution. Andrea arranged for the Alaska Airlines tickets for the group to be endorsed over to Air Canada; Catherine and her colleagues made arrangements with Air Canada’s head office to schedule the
SERVING BURGERS
FOR DREAMLIFT Airport staff volunteered at various Wendy’s restaurants around Kelowna at the 18th
Annual Wendy’s DreamLift
Day and helped raise a record-breaking $114,276.35. Including this amount, Wendy’s DreamLift Day has raised an impressive total of $1,109,356.99 since 1995.
Assistant Operations & Fire Chief Darrell Belgrove showing his chicken grill skills
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YLW.KELOWNA.CA
Sam Watson from Kamloops was the lucky winner of the fall 2011 logo search contest and received a gift card for Orchard Park Mall.
empty aircraft as a passenger flight and then arranged to get the group on the only flight that had enough empty seats flying from Calgary to Hawaii a few hours later. The next available flight with this many empty seats would have been 10 days later.
Thanks to the “above and beyond” service and co-operation of Alaska Airlines and Air Canada the trip was saved and the entire group was able to arrive in Hawaii only a few hours after their original scheduled arrival time.
YLW and Mr. Wishlow’s class wish to acknowledge Andrea Brygin with Alaska Airlines and Catherine Buffie-Carter, Patty Hardy, Liane Warawa, Karen Carson, Gerry Warawa, Faye Shore, Janelle Marchand, Liz Warawa, and Wendy Casey of Air Canada for their amazing teamwork and helping to get those stars aligned.
LOGO SEARCH WINNER
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