My experience with Air Canada in the last few years has been not been great. Mind you, I mostly don’t find them rude, just amazingly uncaring, as though the passeners are widgets passing through their factory. Or an inconvenience passing through their lives, more of a hindrance than anything else.
A couple of minor (but long-winded!) examples:
Last spring I flew Air Canada to a conference in New Brunswick. On the way there, the meal that I had pre-ordered (this was when they still had in-flight service) had not been brought aboard. There was not any expression of regret - just a deadpan, “we don’t have your meal.” And that was it. Then my luggage was damaged as I discovered on landing (one of the supporting leg that allows the suitcase to stand vertically was broken off).
On the return flight, I spent several minutes waiting for my now damaged suitcase to appear. The carousel is still turning but everyone has gone except for me (and the person I went to the conference with). An Air Canada worker wanders over to me and confirms who I am, and then says, “The tag got lost off your luggage. It’s still in Toronto. It won’t be here until tomorrow.” And he walked away. Again, no regret for inconvenience.
So the next morning, I call to confirm that it will be delivered. I am told yes, it will. And I wait, and wait, and wait. I call again. I am told it will be there within a half hour. Finally, my suitcase arrives. As the delivery guy takes it out of his vehicle, I can immediately spot the problem: the handle has been torn away from the suitcase. Since the tag was on the handle, it is hardly a surprise that the tag was “lost”. I point out its absence to the delivery guy. His disinterested reply, “It wasn’t like that when you left? Well I can’t do anyting about it. You’ll have to phone someone.” So I phone, and I am told that I should have reported the damaged luggage at the airport at the time I arrived. I pointed out that this was somewhat difficult in the circumstances. After some humming and hawing I was told that they would take the highly unusual step of mailing a claim form out to me. Interesting that when the form came, it included a requirement that even to get the handle fixed, I had to produce the original receipt from the time of purchase of the suitcase. (And I am happy I remembered to put business cards in several places in the suitcase or I may have never seen it again.)
Last November, I flew to Toronto on Air Canada. I didn’t make the flight arrangements or I would have flown WestJet. The flight was leaving around 7 a.m. I get to the airport, etc. The passengers are all on board, when suddenly, the pilot comes on the intercom and says, “You may be aware that there has been on an incident on the airplane.” Seems that the luggage cart has driven itself into the side of the plane. The pilot is going to get off and inspect the damage. He comes back, and tells us that although they don’t know what they are going to do, this plane will not be flying so please get off the plane. Turns out, the luggage cart not only collided with the plane, but was, in fact, lodged in the plane, and could not be removed.
So off the plane we all get. Air Canada doesn’t know what to do with us, so we all head back down to the Air Canada desks. There is now a line of passengers waiting, for what, we know not. Neither do the Air Canada staff. Some say we have to book other flights; this flight will be cancelled. Others say they may bring in a mechanic. None of them seem the least concerned about the passengers. Finally we are told that they are bringing in a new airplane from out of the province. But, we are told, if we continue to stand in line they will provide us with a $5 voucher for breakfast. So, we wait out turns. As we each receive the voucher, the entire line wends its way to Burger King, the only breakfast source available at the airport.
Then we are told they we have to go down and get our luggage; they are going to take it off the plane and we will have to re-check it through. So, we abandon the breakfast line, and head down to the luggage carousels. We spend 10-15 minutes waiting there, and then we are told, no, only those who are connecting on to other locations beyond Toronto will have their luggage taken off. Everyone else’s will be shifted over to the new plane when it arrives.
So, back to the breakfast line. Finally we are told that the new plane will arrive in 3 hours. Funny thing is, I didn’t see a single passenger lose his or her temper. Also telling, I thought was that not once did I hear anyone working for Air Canada express any sort of regret or indeed any emotion at all for the inconvenience this was causing or for the fact that they obviously had no plan on what to do in these sorts of situations. Mind you, one wouldn’t necessarily develop a plan for “What to do when a luggage truck gets lodged in a plane” but a contingency plan is a contingency plan. So we waited our 3 hours. I happened to have a DVD in my laptop, Finding Nemo, and several of us sat in the airport watching that until the time to leave. I was popular with some parents whose children it entertained.
Oh, and Air Canada’s big “treat” to their passengers - an inflight movie. I was underwhelmed. And woo hoo, it was Le Divorce.
Neither of these were big deals, obviously. I got there and back safely (although my luggage didn’t). But it is the complete disinterest in their passengers that gets to me. I happily fly WestJet, who thank you for flying with them, every time, and you can hear it in their voices that they mean it. They also will entertain, tell jokes while the plane is taxiing, do whatever they reasonably can to make sure their passengers are not only safe, but happy. You can tell they like their company.
I can understand that working for Air Canada must be a less than positive place to be these days, but not making your customers happy is only going to aggravate the problem.
I also have an anecdote from a friend living in Ontario. Last year, he was returning home on an Air Canada flight. As he was disembarking there was the president of Canada shaking passenger’s hands. This was during one of the “Is Air Canada going to go belly-up or be bailed out again” periods. While he was being greeted, he asks the President how frequently he does this. He is told that this is the first time. I think the timing was not a coincidence.
So all in all, I haven’t found them rude, just uncaring. And I find it sad, because for many years, I was a supporter of Air Canada.
