All Wayne Moser wanted to do was get on a flight to Thunder Bay to see his elderly in-laws.
The 66-year-old retired Calgarian was at the airport last week with a boarding pass on his phone for a WestJet flight from Calgary to Thunder Bay. But when the airline employee at the gate checked it against his driver’s licence, she discovered that the document had expired two weeks earlier.
“They don’t let you know that your driver’s licence is coming up for renewal,” Moser said in a call to the National Post. “It’s a five-year period. That’s where they nailed me.”
The gate attendant told Moser that he couldn’t use an expired photo ID to board, and so he dug through his wallet and emerged with his Alberta health card, Alberta Blue Cross and some credit cards. But that wasn’t good enough either.
“She said that won’t work,” Moser recalled.
Then she asked if he had his passport with him. “My passport’s at home because I’m flying in Canada,” he said. “Why bring my passport?”
It seemed like he was out of options, until the attendant said there was one other thing. “I said what’s that? She said do you have your COVID vaccine card?”
He didn’t. Moser, like most people, got the vaccine, but with proof of vaccination no longer required for travel purposes, he didn’t have the paperwork any more.
“Six months before all this I was going through my phone and I saw that picture of my vaccine certificate and I got rid of it,” he recalled. “I thought, what do I need this for?”
But it turns out that even an old COVID vaccine certificate can function as government-issued ID (or as Moser cheekily put it “a get out of jail free card”) if other options fail.
A WestJet representative told the Post: “Guests travelling domestically within Canada may board with two pieces of valid non-photo identification issued by a Canadian federal, provincial or territorial government, both of which must include their name and at least one of which must include their date of birth.”
She continued: “A vaccination certificate does qualify for use as a form of government-issued non-photo identification, provided that it includes the guest’s name as it is written on their boarding pass.”
Most Canadians won’t run into this requirement, since most travellers will be carrying photo identification in the form of a (non-expired) driver’s licence, a passport or a NEXUS card.
Moser was unfortunate in having none of those. And of the other identification on his person, the Alberta health card doesn’t have a photo (it’s still issued on paper in fact), the Blue Cross card is not government-issued, and the credit cards are neither.
“I was totally shocked,” he said. “I’m just a regular guy trying to get to Thunder Bay. I hadn’t seen (my wife’s) parents since before COVID, and they’re in their nineties. Did I miss my opportunity to see them? I don’t know.”
Moser’s wife ended up flying to Thunder Bay without him. He applied to WestJet for a refund on the return portion of the ticket, but after service charges wound up with a credit of just $39.
Moser says he’ll be flying WestJet again on a trip to Hawaii in November. “If this comes out maybe they’ll blacklist me, I don’t know,” he said with a laugh. “Or maybe they’ll feel really bad and give me a free flight.”
One thing for certain is when he shows up for that trip, he’ll have his passport at the ready. And his up-to-date driver’s licence, just in case. “I’ve got my new one already.”
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