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| - Photo by Patrick Cardinal, licensed through Creative Commons |
You know your no-account brother? The one who passes bad cheques and storms out
of the intervention when your father says “You’re killing your mother – just killing
her!”? If he ran an airline it would be
Air Canada. Something of a running joke
here in the Great White North, Air Canada has, in the span of a single decade,
been bailed out by the Canadian government twice (once in 2001, again in 2009)
and shows no sign of improvement.
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| "On second thought, miss, I don't need a blanket. But thank you." |
Check-in agents are
grumpy, flight attendants could frighten
Rampage Jackson and should a delayed flight cause you to miss a connection in
the evening there is no guarantee AC will issue you a hotel voucher.
My distaste for Air Canada is such that I wouldn’t mention
the airline at all if not for my fellow Canadian readers, who are not exactly
spoiled for choice when it comes to choosing a Transatlantic carrier*. Given their limited options, Air Canada
represents the middle ground between the higher prices and superior service of
British Airways and the bargain basement airborne buses operated by Air
Transat.
* Update: As of May 24th, Virgin Atlantic will be operating
four flights a week from Vancouver to London Heathrow, meaning you west
coasters will have even less reason to fly with Air Canada.
Fares:
Fares listed below are in Canadian dollars and represent the
cheapest fares available for low & high season as of this writing. These prices should be considered a baseline
only as there are endless variations possible, including the day of travel, any
holidays that happen to be taking place during your travel period and whether
or not the website decides you have a stupid face. These prices also exclude any extras you
purchase, including exit-row seating or additional bags, covered further down
the page.
Remember that you will fly the class you have paid for - upgrades are a lie, like eternal happiness and the bulge in David Hasselhoff's shorts.
Remember that you will fly the class you have paid for - upgrades are a lie, like eternal happiness and the bulge in David Hasselhoff's shorts.
From
|
Daily Departures
|
Length
|
Low/High Season
|
Calgary (YYC)
|
1
|
8h30m-9h20m
|
$1075/1500
|
Montreal (YUL)
|
1
|
6h40m-7h20m
|
$885/1400
|
Toronto (YYZ)
|
4-5
|
7-8h
|
$870/1350
|
Vancouver (YVR)
|
1
|
9-10h
|
$1030/1500
|
Baggage:
First bag (maximum weight 50lbs) free, second bag $70 each
direction. You’ll be allowed one
carry-on bag and one “personal article” (laptop, bag from the duty-free,
etc). If you’re in Executive Class or
Executive First then your first two bags are free. If you qualify as Air Canada Elite or Super
Elite then you’re allowed to bring more luggage than a traveling production of Tosca and are probably not reading this
article.
Food:
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| Good luck with that. |
The food is uniformly awful and tastes almost exclusively of
salt. You may have better luck opting for the kosher or halal meals while
booking your ticket – for some reason they tend to more closely resemble real
food. Not good food you understand, but it’s
an improvement over “broiled salt log in tomato & salt sauce”. There is no additional charge for choosing
kosher or halal. Alcohol & soft drinks are complimentary.
Seating:
The seating in coach is about what you’d expect, which is to
say not very comfortable but an improvement on that offered by Air
Transat. All Air Canada planes are now
equipped with seat-back televisions (complimentary headphones are provided
should you not have your own) though I have had flights where they are inactive
or broken and this is when you really start to appreciate the complimentary alcohol.
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| Or you'll end up confused and on network television for six years |
Exit row seating is priced differently than
standard seats, with a premium of $90 per seat each direction. The advantage of exit row seating is that it
offers more legroom and the chance to be first off the plane in the event of a “water
landing”. I am, of course, kidding - if
the plane goes down over the ocean you’re going to die immediately. But you’ll die immediately with plenty of leg
room.
Final thought:
Unless there is no other choice I won’t fly Air Canada and
you probably shouldn’t either. My only positive
experience with the airline was in the summer of 2006, on their Vancouver to
Toronto route. My cousin & I were
off on our first backpacking trip and we had brought toys (a plastic muppet and
a ceramic smoking monkey) to photograph in different locations along the way
and a flight attendant noticed us, as tends to happen when two grown men play
with toys.
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| They got more action than we did on that trip |
Smiling, she offered to take
pictures of them all around the plane and by the end of the flight we had a fun
collection of pictures. I never saw the
attendant again and assume that our 2.5 hour delay on the ground in Toronto was
due to her being bundled off the plane and shipped to Air Canada’s equivalent
of Room 101 for “correction”.
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| Pepe & Smoking Monkey have been waiting for her to call ever since |
Check back next Wednesday for the low-down on Canada's budget airline Air Transat: The Greyhound of the Sky
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