Just when you thought it couldn't get any worse for United Airlines, this happens.
According to Travel and Leisure, Richard and Linda Bell were on a United Airlines flight home from Houston to Calgary on Sunday, after spending two weeks on vacation in Mexico. And while they were not violently deplaned out of yet another overbooked airplane, a just as traumatic ordeal took place when a scorpion fell from the overhead compartment and on to Richard.
As we've covered extensively in the past (here and here), home prices and vacant offices in Calgary have been a complete disaster as a result of the collapse in oil prices. Recall the troubling divergence in home prices that Calgary is experiencing in relation to other major cities in Canada.
And also, vacancy rates ebb and flow with the price of crude.
Times are tough in Alberta and to be sure, we’ve piled it on heavy when it comes to cataloguing the long list of pitiable outcomes that have accompanied crude’s steep slide.
The province is at the center of Canada’s dying oil patch and as crude extended its seemingly endless decline last year, Alberta saw oil and gas investment plunge by a third. That’s bad news for authorities who count on resources for 30% of provincial revenues.
We’ve spent quite a bit of time over the past 12 months documenting the trainwreck that is Alberta’s economy.
Most recently, we brought you "This Is Canada's Depression: Surging Crime, Soaring Suicides, Overwhelmed Food Banks" and "For Canadian Repo Men, Business Has Never Been Better", but you can review the story in its entirety by revisiting the following posts:
Back in March, we brought you “Drugs, Prostitution, Violence Plague Oil Boom Towns Gone Bust,” in which we detailed the plight of towns like Sidney and Bainville, Montana, where the slump in oil revenue has made it all but impossible for local authorities to cope with surging crime rates that some attribute to the influx of oil workers the communities experienced in the good old days of high crude prices.