Nunavut mom thankful after Yellowknife woman offered to pay for son’s airline ticket

A Nunavut mom is happy to be home for Christmas in Gjoa Haven with her son, after an airline ticketing mix-up almost left the nine-year-old boy stranded in Yellowknife.

And Millie Putuguq says she's especially thankful for another woman's generous offer to cover the $1,000 she almost had to pay to fix the issue.

Putuguq and her son Cohen were at the Yellowknife airport on Friday, en route to Gjoa Haven after visiting Putuguq’s daughter in Calgary. When they tried to check in for their Canadian North flight, they were told there was a problem.

“The ticket counter said they couldn’t find Cohen’s itinerary on the screen,” Putuguq recalled.

She says she was then told to call the airline's customer service line, where she reached a supervisor who told her the same thing: the airline couldn't find Cohen's itinerary. She was also told that she'd have to pay the full fare price of $1,000, for a new ticket for Cohen.

“I didn’t have that much funds in my account,” Putuguq said.

She says she spent an hour on the phone with the airline trying to work it out.

Meanwhile, Jane Arychuk had also arrived at the Yellowknife airport, to deliver something from her business to Putuguq, who was going to take it to Gjoa Haven. The two women had never met before.

“[I] arrived to Millie on the phone and in tears,” Arychuk recalled.

She said that Putuguq explained that the airline was not honouring a change she’d made to Cohen's ticket, and that the boy was going to have to stay in Yellowknife until Monday.

“She was very upset because her son could not stay here by himself, and was trying to figure it out with them on the phone how she was going to make it work," Arychuk said.

Putuguq told her that she didn't have $1,000 to buy another ticket to fly that day.

“So I said, 'I’ll buy it,'" Arychuk said.

"I just thought, [it's] Christmas time, we need people to be home together, and I just thought it was something I could do and make it a little easier for her, and less stressful.”

Putuguq recalled how Arychuk had found her in distress.

"She knew there was something going on,” Putuguq recalled.

When Arychuk offered to buy a new ticket, Putuguq wanted to try one more time to see if the airline could solve the issue.

“I told her [Arychuk], 'just wait until I see if they can help me in any other way.'”

The company had told Putuguq to call back again, and when she did, she said she was put through to a director who told her they would fix the itinerary for her.

In a statement to CBC News, Canadian North spokesperson Kelly Lewis confirmed that they then updated Cohen's ticket at the check-in counter.

"His previous ticket had been exchanged, but it didn’t have a valid itinerary attached to travel on this day, so a payment would have been needed,” the spokesperson explained.

Lewis said that in the end, the only charge was a small fee to make the change.

“It did take some time to sort out these changes, but our team was happy to help," Lewis said.

She also said that airline staff were "touched by the other customer’s willingness to assist in the spirit of the holidays."

Arychuk stayed with Putuguq until mother and son both had their boarding passes for Gjoa Haven.

“I just thought, if I was a young mother in this situation with a young child, I would hope somebody else could step up and help me as well,” Arychuk said.

Putuguq praised Arychuk's "Christmas spirit."

"She’s a miracle, I can tell you,” Putuguq said.