I recall a recent Pit thread in which Air Canada was ripped a new one because of lost luggage problems. All in all, though, does Air Canada completely suck? I ask because we are contemplating a trip to Montreal in early Autumn, and I’m starting to research airlines which will fly there nonstop from San Francisco. Thanks for any advice.
They don’t completely suck.
The one time I flew with them, Toronto to Los Angeles non-stop, it was a smooth flight with no issues. Even the food was good.
Alright…I got one positive thought in before the next 20 negative ones. Let the floodgates open.
I’ve never had problems with their frights between Montreal and Washington DC. Mostly on time, polite flight attendants, no real complaints. I don’t usually check luggage, but the couple times I did it was waiting for me at the right place when I arrived.
They tend to be a little more expensive than some of the other carriers, but I think they’re fine.
I’ve flown with them from Columbus, Ohio, to Toronto and from Toronto to Quebec City. I didn’t notice them being signifiicantly better or worse than other carriers: the major different is that all the in-flight announcements are in two languages.
They’re horrible… but these days, who isn’t (okay, Air Emirates)? Nice flight attendants, but the food is crap and little things around the plane tend to be broken.
I’ve had no problems with them on the many times I’ve flown domestically with them. I’ve been tempted to try WestJet to get cheaper fares, but so far haven’t bothered. They did lose my luggage once when I was coming back from Ireland, but it was after I had cleared customs in Toronto on my way back to Edmonton so I had no difficulty with customs; they delivered my bag to my home the next day.
I used to fly just about every domestic airline in North America.
Air Canada was, absolutely and without question, the best full service airline* I flew. I flew them all; American, United, Delta (shudder) Northwest, even USAir. Dozens, scores of flights. Air Canada beat them all, hands down, in terms of reliability, timeliness, customer service and luggage-losing probability.
Were there some problems? Sure, but not with anywhere near the frequency I experienced with other airlines.
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- I am counting discount airlines like WestJet and Southwest as being different. WestJet always did very well; Southwest I only flew once, and it was problem free.
For a simple, direct flight from San Fran to Montreal Air Canada might be fine. The problem is that if you run into any kind of problem - anything at all, from bad weather to lost luggage - they are supremely and spectacularly unhelpful. Their basic technique is to shrug and tell you that there’s nothing to be done. The gate agents are not allowed to escalate problems to management, so you end up with no real way to get something done except to argue endlessly.
Many of my flights with Air Canada have been just the same as flying with any other airline. The few times it went wrong it went incredibly wrong. Like once they took me from Saskatoon to Calgary via Vancouver when I wanted to be in Kelowna and then insisted that Calgary was pretty close and I’d just have to get somebody to come and pick me up (a distance of about 600km). Another time, flying from Vancouver to Halifax with a connection in Toronto they sent the Toronto plane off early, and then when I got there and it was gone they told me that connecting in Toronto on to Halifax was ‘extremely unusual’ and so nobody had thought I was actually coming.
I have sworn off them many times, but WestJet just doesn’t have the coverage they do, so what are you going to do? Air Canada, I wish I knew how to quit you.
I have flown non stop from San Diego to Toronto on Air Canada a few times and it is the best non stop flight for that leg. The seats have their own mini TVs so you can watch whatever you want. Something I don’t get when I fly United. The staff is professional. I just was on AC from NYC to YYZ and flew exec and it was also just as good. I would recommend the non stop flight from west coast to your location. I not had any issues with lost baggage with them, but thats never a guarantee that it can’t happen.
In Western Canada, I find that people make a hobby of hating on AC, but I’ve always found them to be fine. I was at a party in Calgary and the conversation turned to Air Canada, how horrible they are, how most third world countries would be ashamed to have them in their country, etc. I expressed surprise since I’ve always found them to be reliable and reasonable in the dozens of flights I’ve taken with them. I was told that I was a liar. Sure, OK.
Maybe I’m just really lucky when it comes to Air Canada?
Of course, now that I’ve said this my flight home this summer will probably find me suddenly routed thousands of miles from where I intended to be, with a swearing AC agent getting into a fistfight with me or something. 
If you want a nonstop flight from San Francisco to Montreal, you better hope that Air Canada doesn’t suck, because they are the only airline that flies this route.
Actually, I’ve flown Air Canada quite a few times, in fact I’ve flown this particular route on Air Canada several times, and they are fine. The only thing is that they do not serve a free meal in coach – you can buy food if you want.
Ed
Air Canada is a little spendy compared to most American airlines, but they are not too bad. I think that the leg room is a little better than it is on American or United, instead of lots of rows of 5 seats, AC has fewer rows of 6 seats.
Everything has a cost except soft drinks and earphones which they tell you to keep for future flights. I just flew on AC from Toronto to Las Vegas and back and on the way down a lady behind me asked for a blanket and got a blanket/pillow pack for $2.
The real winner is their in-flight entertainment. I don’t know if all flights have it yet, but the last 4 flights I was on all had individual monitors for each seat. While the guy next to me was watching ‘The Bucket List’, I watched an episode of ‘Futurama’ and "The Man Who Knew Too Much’.
I think the thing is they can be completely fine. If there is no delay, etc, they are actually quite a pleasant airline, with good entertainment, reasonably comfortable and clean planes, good routes, and better food than most (for a fee). If things go wrong my experience is that they are surprisingly unhelpful - much moreso than other airlines are. Having said that if it weren’t for my few bad experiences with them, I might be singing their praises too. Maybe in Western Canada things just go wrong more often due to weather delays, etc?
Naw, it’s just WestJet. Calgary is its home and Albertans are proud of it; and since Air Canada’s head office is in Montreal, I think there’s a bit of an east-west rivalry happening.
I used to be a Super Elite (or whatever the top status of frequent flyer is in Air Canada’s Aeroplan) member, which meant that I spent a lot of time flying Air Canada. Never had a problem on domestic flights, on transborder flights to the US, or on overseas flights. Flights were generally on time, any delays were short, and luggage always appeared in a reasonable time. Even our cats rode in an Air Canada cargo hold from Toronto to Calgary, and arrived safely and on time.
As for WestJet, you can have it. They’re the only airline that, when I was trying to get from Saskatoon to Toronto, sent me via Calgary and Winnipeg. I still don’t know why.
This is my experience too. When things are routine, AC is a very pleasant experience. When dealing with an unusual situation - lost baggage, re-booking a ticket or dealing with any of a number of items that can and do regularly go wrong in the world of scheduled airline activity, Air Canada is spectacularly unhelpful and uncaring.
As you say, this kind of makes up our minds for us. I thought another airline or two would offer this service.
Thanks for all your input, everyone. Should we end up going, my next thread will ask for advice on the best French restaurants to hit while we’re there.
…sigh… This post is kinda pointless since you have no other comparable options, but I must rant, if only a little.
My beefs with air canada:
-penny pinching pricing policy: you have to pay extra for every little thing: to get points on your flight, booking with a human agent, pillows, blankets, etc. they even started charging extra to take care of you if something goes wrong with the flight. They call it trip insurance or something. If you don’t buy it, and you’re stranded because they screw up somehow, then good luck Jack, cause you’re on your own for meals and accommodations.
-$120 fuel surcharge for domestic flights when everyone else charges $60.
-long check-in lines with few positions staffed, even for baggage drop-off if you’re already checked in by internet.
-they have a policy of systematically penalizing you every time you chose to deal with a human employee instead of using an automated self-serve system. Either by charging extra or making you wait.
-their grim, humorless, downright grouchy check-in agents seem to follow the old soviet Russia bread-line model of customer service, probably a cultural relic of when Air Canada was a government-run monopoly, since they seem to have laid-off all the employees that were hired after then.
-they managed to loose my 80-yr old mother’s personal wheelchair which we gate-checked, for crying out loud. I got my governmental “secret” clearance with less paperwork & delay than they demanded to refund the damn thing.
The one thing in your favor is that you are flying internationally, where they do have to put up with competition. I have found that their service is much less atrocious on such routes, because they can actually loose passengers. And even there, they only rise to the level of service of their competition, and not one tiny envelope of salt more. The service I got going to Japan was way better than Toronto-LA, because they had to compete with Asian airlines.
The level of service I experienced on domestic routes where they were the monopoly was downright customer hostile. The same carry-on with which I was helped no-questions-asked on international flight was always submitted to aggressive checking for *both *weight and dimensions to see if they could reject it & make me check it.
I am an unabashed West-Jet fan, and would pay $100 more to fly with them given the choice. Their agents are pleasant, smile, and actually seem, gasp, happy to see you. They let my 5-yr old push the button to send the luggage onto the conveyor belt, which is one of the highlights of the trip, as far as he is concerned. Their check-in positions are always almost fully staffed, and their lines are shorter and move much faster. I have never encountered a West-Jet carry-on Nazi.
The one time we had a delay with West-Jet, the employees were going batshit crazy to help us, keep us informed (updates every 15 minutes), and they were giving out meal-vouchers like a drunken sailor 30 minutes before the end of the world. For a blooming 4 hour delay.
I hate Air Canada. I loathe them with a passion reserved for fingernails on blackboards, papercuts in lemon juice, parking tickets, loud restaurant cell-phone talkers, and mistaking the ben-gay for the preparation-H. They are the Thenardiers of the Airline industry.
*Aaannnd *my cousin, whom I admire to a point bordering on hero-worship, if this can be said by a forty-year old guy, flies 777s for them across the Pacific. I would cheer on just about anything he got involved in. Needless to say, I don’t share my true feelings with him on that regard. Neither is this regional boosterism: I lived more than half my life in Montreal, and only 8 years in Calgary. I’m still a huge Habs (Montreal Candians hockey team) fan.
That’s all very good, but WestJet won’t get you from San Francisco to Montreal. In fact, they don’t fly from San Francisco at all.
Ed
You’re absolutely right, hence the pointlessness of my post. Heck, I don’t even think they do San Francisco Calgary. I guess I was just posting for catharsis, and perhaps, on the faint hope that someone might see this on an archive search one day, and spare themselves some grief. With luck, perhaps this will come up in some Air Canada’s internet image consultant’s weekly survey.
Maybe a little late to the party, but better late than never. Full disclosure - I’m the guy that pitted the luggage delivery, and am a Travel Agent who did 2.3 million worth of AC sales last year (yes you read that right, and a fat lot of good it did me!).
Some thoughts: AC isn’t that bad an airline. They do now charge for extra services like seat assignment on some fares, food in North America, blankets and pillows on long haul flights in North America (except for red-eyes).
For the good, fleet renewal is almost complete (project XM), so 85% of the fleet has PTVs. Also, on time performance isn’t too bad - they tend to favour getting the long-hauls out on time VS the two “triangles”, which are Calgary Edmonton Vancouver, and Toronto Montreal Ottawa.
Some tips for your particular journey: UA will code share on the flights. Do NOT buy the UA marketed ticket. The fee to change tickets is $40 with AC and $100 with UA.
If you need to make a change, do it at night. Their overnight call centre is in St John NB, and the same staff works all the time - they’re more friendly, and since no supervisors are on at night, they’re senior staff who know what they’re doing, and are willing to work with you.
Also note, direct flights are always better for checked bags.