Airport desk
The set is collected at the rental desk in the arrivals area, ready for the taxi line. For late arrivals the desk hands the gear over before the family reaches the curb.
The case behind the page
The double stroller that did not fit the gate
Rhea Varma and Marcus Okafor took their thirteen-month-old twins, Aya and Adam, on their first flight as a family of four: the 16:10 Air Canada service from Toronto Pearson to Vancouver, for the twins’ grandparents’ fiftieth anniversary dinner in Burnaby on the Saturday. They packed for the five-hour leg the way first-time flying parents do — a diaper bag each, two suitcases, and the side-by-side double stroller that had carried both babies since the day they could sit up.
The gate agent was friendly about it. One stroller per child could be taken to the aircraft door, but the double was eighty-two centimetres wide — over the gate-check limit — so it went on the belt as oversize baggage. The umbrella stroller they had nearly left at home became the one that met them at the door in Vancouver. The double came up on the oversize belt thirty-eight minutes after the carousel started, by which time Aya was asleep against Marcus’s shoulder and Adam was awake and pointing at every suitcase that was not theirs.
It was not a disaster. It was an hour of juggling two toddlers, two suitcases and one single stroller at belt four, and the quiet decision, on the SkyTrain to the hotel, that the gear would never fly again. That evening Rhea booked the rental online: a double stroller, two car seats fitted to the rental car, and a travel crib for the room. The set was at the hotel lobby by nine the next morning, and the anniversary dinner happened with two clean, well-rested grandchildren in highchairs.
On the way home the family checked nothing but the suitcases. The stroller, the seats and the crib went back to the rental operator, and the twins flew with the umbrella stroller and no belt-four arithmetic. The rental service behind the page is WeeTravel Baby Equipment Rentals of Vancouver, and dates, fleet and prices are set out at weetravel.ca.
The rule is one stroller per child at the gate. A double counts as one — and it goes on the belt.
— Rhea Varma, illustrative account
The rental does one thing: it keeps the bulky gear out of the air. Sizes, dates and delivery options live on weetravel.ca.
