A woman whose flight from Seattle to Vancouver was cancelled by Air Canada ended up hitching a ride with a stranger in order to make her cruise on time.
On 7 August, Chelsea Smith arrived at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport at 3:45am with her husband, Russ, and their son Logan, three. The family, who were flying Air Canada, was supposed to land in Vancouver that day in time for their cruise.
By six in the morning, Smith said in a video posted to TikTok that there were no staffers working the Air Canada bag drop, and showed a line of passengers waiting to board their flight that would never come.
“We’re at the Seattle airport, been here since 3.45am,” she said in the video. “It is now 6am and we’re supposed to be flying on Air Canada. Flight leaves right now and nobody is at the gate desk.”
Speaking to The Independent, Smith explained that her family was about tenth in line for their flight when no one came to check in passengers. “We didn’t think much of it at this point and figured they’d show up soon,” she told us.
Once 5am rolled around and the next group of flight passengers began to arrive, Smith started to get worried. Soon after, she learned right as the plane was supposed to take off that their flight was cancelled, along with other Air Canada flights for that morning.
An Air Canada spokesperson told Canadian news outlet Daily Hive that its flights out of Seattle are handled by a third-party service provider, which didn’t have enough staff to operate the flight. They added that all passengers were rebooked on flights within 24 hours. While Air Canada offered to rebook Smith’s flight for 4pm that day, her family needed to be in Vancouver by noon for their cruise.
That was when a woman named Annie Nguyen met Smith and her family in line for the flight and offered to drive them two and a half hours from Seattle to Vancouver. Smith explained that Nguyen had dropped off her mother at the airport that morning, and “didn’t have anything else she needed to do that day”.
“We were kind of in disbelief that someone would be generous enough to do this for us, but we felt like she was our best option to make it to the cruise ship on time,” she added. “I’ve definitely been fortunate to have small random acts of kindness done for me over the years, I’ve never had anything even remotely close to this amazing happen to me. “
While on board the cruise, Smith took to TikTok to share her story with her followers. “So, a random stranger takes me and my husband and my three-year-old son from Seattle to Vancouver, crosses the border, drops us off at the cruise ship with plenty of time left,” she said in the follow-up video. “I still cannot believe that this happened to us. We lucked out that the nicest person ever was behind us in line.”
The mother of one started to get emotional when thinking about Nguyen’s generosity towards her family. “It makes me want to cry because I just can’t believe that happened,” she said. “We thought we were screwed that we were gonna miss our cruise because Air Canada cancelled our flight.”
Since then, Smith and Nguyen texted several times throughout the last week, and she even plans on sending a gift to Smith’s three-year-old son. When she posted her first video from the Seattle Airport to TikTok, Smith didn’t expect that it would actually be her video about Nguyen that would go viral instead.
“There is a lot of negative media right now all over the world. Every time you look at any news outlet, it seems to highlight yet another awful thing that is going on,” she said. “We’re happy to be able to focus on something good in the world. If you can’t seem to find anything good, then create it yourself! Annie’s selfless act was a good reminder that we can always be doing more to pay it forward with kindness.”
Chelsea Smith signed off her TikTok with a message for the kind stranger-turned-friend: “Annie Nguyen, you are an angel and the greatest person I’ve ever met in my life.”
