{"id":162509,"date":"2018-05-03T03:47:20","date_gmt":"2018-05-03T07:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=162509"},"modified":"2018-05-03T03:47:20","modified_gmt":"2018-05-03T07:47:20","slug":"air-canada-agrees-to-give-free-tickets-to-love-struck-man-with-a-catch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2018\/05\/03\/air-canada-agrees-to-give-free-tickets-to-love-struck-man-with-a-catch\/","title":{"rendered":"Air Canada agrees to give free tickets to love struck man with a catch"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Air<\/a>
Air Canada responded Tuesday by asking what the population of Newfoundland was \u2014 and said it would take that many. (Wikipedia photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

JOHN’S, N.L. \u2014 A love-struck Michigan man has convinced Air Canada to give him free tickets to visit his Newfoundland girlfriend \u2014 if he can manage to make his campaign go viral.<\/p>\n

C.J. Poirier of Clarkston, Mich., met Becca Warren of Corner Brook, N.L., online last year.<\/p>\n

After six months of daily texts, Facetime calls, and chatting with each others’ friends and family, the two decided they wanted to meet in person. But neither could afford a flight.<\/p>\n

So Poirier took to Twitter, asking Air Canada how many retweets it would take for free roundtrip tickets.<\/p>\n

Air Canada responded Tuesday by asking what the population of Newfoundland was \u2014 and said it would take that many.<\/p>\n

Poirier needs 530,000 retweets; he was at 13,000 late Wednesday night, and rising fast.<\/p>\n

\u201cQuite honestly, I was very surprised to see the campaign start growing at the rate it is now,\u201d Poirier told The Canadian Press over a Twitter message.<\/p>\n

The 19-year-old barista said he didn’t expect a response from Air Canada, but it’s made him and Warren optimistic that the dream trip could finally happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen they first responded, I had a sliver of hope. That sliver has become a mountain and I could not be any more excited,\u201d said Poirier.<\/p>\n

Poirier and Warren’s international love story has proven inspiring. Canadian comedian Colin Mochrie shared Poirier’s tweet on Wednesday, writing \u201cHelp true love….\u201d<\/p>\n

Isabelle Arthur of Air Canada wrote in an e-mailed statement that the company reacted to Poirier’s authenticity.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe certainly hope we? all 530,000 of us?. get invited to the wedding,\u201d Arthur wrote.<\/p>\n

Warren said she isn’t surprised by Poirier’s far-fetched plan \u2014 in her words, \u201che’s a pretty quirky guy.\u201d She found out about his Twitter campaign after it had already started racking up retweets.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was literally grocery shopping with my mom and my brother yesterday and he called me and was like, you have to see this,\u201d Warren recalled with a laugh.<\/p>\n

Poirier hopes to meet his goal by May 13, so he can use the time he has already booked off work to make the trip to Corner Brook.<\/p>\n

Both are unsure if the Twitter campaign will meet its goal. But Poirier posted Wednesday afternoon that he’ll be livestreaming a fundraiser on YouTube Gaming Thursday as another way to cobble his ticket funds together.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if we don’t make it, I still plan on going,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that Detroit is kind of a strange place to go from Newfoundland doesn’t make it cheap at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

JOHN’S, N.L. \u2014 A love-struck Michigan man has convinced Air Canada to give him free tickets to visit his Newfoundland …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":37647,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[10857,50542,50543],"class_list":["post-162509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ca","tag-air-canada","tag-free-tickets","tag-love-struck-man","mauthors-holly-mckenzie-sutter","mauthors-the-canadian-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}