Air Canada sale

@chunky

 

I saw that...
Aaarrrggghhhhhh

 

Air torture

 

As if OD-ing on snow porn isn't bad enough!

 

Just behind Air India in my experience

 

For the price I’ll ignore the service, or lack there of.

 

Yeah I would put up with it for the direct fight.

 

Just flew direct each way to Vancouver and it was great but wow worst service and attitude I have ever experienced on and off the plane.

 

Nothing has changed in 15 years then

 

Funny, American late-night talk show hosts always seem to be parodying Canadians for their excessive politeness.

 

The only issue with the AC direct flight I have is it's such a cram bus. Seats are small, service is basic, fed and watered, plenty of movies. Sure beats dinking about with stop overs.

 

Unless you hit a headwind and have an unscheduled trip thru US customs at Honalulu.

 

Or it's cancelled and you have to come back tomorrow

That sort of stuff happens across all airlines

 

Yikes, does that happen frequently on that flight? I'm trying to make some plans here.

 

Once in 15 trips, back in 2010. Something broke that took a day to fix.

 

Flew Melb-Vancouver direct a couple of weeks ago.... absolutely fine. Couldn't complain about anything. You get what you pay for.

 

You don’t always get what you pay for,
We asked how much for premium upgrade,
Was pretty expensive so said don’t worry,
He then said look what if in premium I also give you bulkhead with extra room and it’s only two seats on your own for you and your wife so we payed the extra(this took 1hr to process).
At boarding they said sorry step aside we need to print new tickets for you and then they moved us to the middle of premium.
They also made an error and held 4 charges of premium on our card for over a week and refused to help this maxed out our cc.
On the return my screen wouldn’t work and asking to fix it was like asking for a first born then after 2 try’s they said oh we probably can’t fix it just share your wife’s.
Luckily someone next to us moved and we could move over or it would have been 16hrs no entertainment.

 

Yep sounds like Air Canada all right, most Canadians avoid if possible, use Westjet if available. But the nonstop service from Australia into YVR is super convenient and helps maximise holiday time. People do place value on that and AC gets business despite customer misgivings. I know we thought about it a fair bit but concluded we would still rather eliminate sectors when we go in a couple of weeks. Plus the US govt shutdown could well be back on by then, anything routed through LAX or other US transfer point could be a big mess.

Westjet are taking delivery of 787-9 aircraft this year and next, but the announcements about new routes have all been Europe so far. Asia is next, likely Shanghai and Hong Kong first. I'm hopeful of an announcement for an Australia service but not sure how realistic that is.

 

You are 100% right the convenience is a huge plus and I’d probably consider it again but at least I’d know what I’m in for.

 

PE is a pricey way to avoid the sardine can which is the 3-4-3 economy configuration on a B777, costing near double the price.

A couple we know spent many years in the Maritimes so often go back to visit. Since AC went 3-4-3 down the back on their 777s what they do is buy the three seats on the side for the two of them. So it becomes kind of like Air NZ's "cuddle class".

They do it using a travel agent as (a) they are able to see if there are any such rows available before buying three seats and (b) the interface to the reservation system made available to travel agents allows them to apply just two sets of taxes, not three. So it averages out at paying about 40% more and works well.

 

Just got back. No real complaints in 4 flights. YVR>Syd was 2 hours late departing which was inconvenient but not totally terrible.

Seats were ok IMO, without being great. Staff were alright.

Biggest annoyance was the time they take to check you in! Press a few keyboard buttons>wait 5 minutes>press a few more> wait 5 minutes>repeat 3-4 times, and there is a 35 minute check in. Just nuts, but not a deal breaker.

 

Ive heard of this, but I wonder about th lo details. How you get around supplying a name for the nonexistent third person? And how do you prevent check in staff from taking the seat if they're overbooked?

 

The front end presented to travel agents by the so-called 'global distribution systems' allows them to do a block booking of three seats but just two people (and hence two lots of taxes). As to over-booking AC certainly engaged in that in my experience domestically and in the old days on AC33 going via HNL or to/from SFO and YYC giving me nail biting waits at the gate but once AC33 and AC34 flights went direct I never encountered it. Could have been luck. However these folks have never had a problem in connection with overbooking and their last return on AC34 was fully booked, and possibly overbooked, leaving the cabin crew puzzled as to how come there was an empty seat between them.
.

 

You also only pay for the fare and not the government taxes saving approx. $200-$300 on the normal seat price.