Well, i’ve done it again. I should know better but I flew Air Canada again. Thanks for losing my bags and ruining another race weekend. Great national flag carrier. Canadians should be proud. Never again will I fly this airline. I travel all over the world for business and this piece of crap airline is quickly entering the Top 5 Worst up there with the worst of the Third World airlines.
Air Canada - YOU SUCK.
I’m not going to say that the service is awesome but if you are going to bash a business entity, at least give specifics. Losing bags is something common on all airlines worldwide. Sorry to hear that your race weekend got messed up. That is too bad.
Good thing we have Westjet (I have flown “any airline but Air Canada” for the past 10 years)
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i too am not a huge fan of aircanada. but last year while flying to HI, my 1st leg on AC was quite plesant. nice breakfast, plenty of leg room. next leg was delta and it was straight out of a bad movie. no leg room. no food, wait…no movie. well, no sound as the speaker jacks didn’t work. as bad as they can be…there is worse out there.
k
OK now it’s personal. As an employee of AC I must agree with Dev, more details before you bash a Co. We, Air Canada continue to take a beating via the media and in most cases unjustly. There are a lot of reasons you may have not received your bags and not all can be blamed on AC. Yes I feel for your bag loss, I too have been there, one week without my bag knowing and having confirmed 1st hand where it was within the 1st day. Yes I did travel Air Canada, but it wasn’t there fault, I knew what the details were. I also arrived at a race without my bike but Air Canada bend over backwards to have it delivered to me before it was to late, at an incredable cost to them I might add. Yes I will admit there are a few in the airline that need to work on communicating our ‘customer service’ I will apologies on behalf of AC if that was the case, We are not all like that. In fact I know most of us enjoy our work and do the best we can to do it right and proudly.
You can spot the former Canadian Airline employees at Air Canada by how much better they treat customers.
You can spot the former Canadian Airline employees at Air Canada by how much better they treat customers.
Really, do these employees have a special tatoo that says ‘I am former Canadian employee’ What a load of shit, You have good and bad in all cases. If you are going to make a statement like that again back it up with some merit.
To be honest, I’ve almost always had excellent service from Air Canada. Often their corporate decision makers seem out to lunch, but the rank and file employees have always been top notch. Compared to some airlines, especially some I’ve flown in Asia, AC cabin crews won’t be winning any beauty contests, but they’re usually far friendlier, more genuine, and more competent than their prettier competitors.
i usually fly around the world 2x/year, and have more or less sworn off air canada for international flights. just one too many bad experiences. i’m not going to sit here and list all the specific incidents, but for the old meat-n-potatoes toronto-heathrow route i think someone like british airways offers a much more pleasant flight, and frequently at better prices.
on the other hand, for domestic i really like what they’re (finally!) doing with tango.
-mike
corporate decision makers seem out to lunch
Now we’re talking!! …and I’ll stop now after all this is a TRI forum
Probably only flown AC 6 or 8 times. ALWAYS a pleasant experience, impressed with their staff, their service, and their work ethic. If I had a choice on the routes I fly I would look for the AC connection first.
Sorry you lost your bag, but every company has wonderful and terrible occurances, what matters in the long run is where the median is located.
The airlines could serve us all much better, if we didn’t insist on purchasing the lowest fare each time we fly. WE have created the airlines we have to choose from by increasingly starving them of cashflow with our purchasing actions. It’s no different than the Wal-Mart-ization of our communities, and the off-shoring of manufacturing jobs - it’s not WalMart’s fault, we are the ones that want to save $2 on unnecessary plastic junk for the kids
I have never had a big problem with AC either. I fly with them quite frequently and I’ve never had a really bad experience with them. My DH flies weekly with them and never has a problem either. The staff has been very pleasant and they do their best to make your flight a good one. We had our luggage lost once and it showed up on our doorstep the next morning at 10:00 am.
Lost luggage is often the fault of connections that are too close together. If your flight is delayed a bit (often due to weather or air traffic control) and you only have 20 minutes to make your connection, your luggage is not likely to make that connection even if you do. Back in the day when we used to have travel agents book our flights, they would make sure you had enough time between flights to account for delays. Now that we often book our own flights, we book them too close together and this “lost luggage” issue comes up more often. I used to fly through Atlanta all the time with Delta. The travel agent would always book a 2+ hour lag between connections. She told me this was necessary for a big airport like Atlanta given the flight delays that often happen. If I was booking that on my own, I would take the 1 hour lag instead, if I didn’t know better.
I’m sorry you’ve had so many problems with them, but that hasn’t been my experience.
Dawn
That’s usually always the case for PAWOPs, passengers arriving without bags. Also flying different carriers on the same flight leg adds to the logistic nightmare
I fly a lot. Typically 4-8 times a month, and that’s not counting each leg as its own journey. While AC is far from perfect, they’re second on my options list. You could do a hell of a lot worse than AC. Ask Francois about Delta. 
Seriously though, as much as losing your baggage sucks, that can and will happen with any airline - be it a top-shelf carrier like BA/SIA/Cathay/Air France, or SouthWest.
They have a pretty nice lounge, too. 
Not a lot of specifics to tell. I checked my bags in St. John’s, cleared Customs in Toronto and rechecked bags for Milwaukee. One-hour and thirty minute flight later - no bags. Four additional flights (and 36 hours) have shown up from Toronto and still no bags. Baggage information does not know where they are, online tracking does not know where they are.
As far as those of you with good service with Air Canada - great for you. I live in Newfoundland and we get screwed all the time by AC. For those of you who are employees - check it out how often our flights get cancelled “due to weather” yet CanJet, WestJet, and Continental all are still flying - for example. Once, in Toronto, we were on the plane to St. John’s, they took all of us off and re-loaded the plane for a flight to Montreal. They took us off the plane! Four hours later they found another for us. On and on it goes…
Look, I understand the airline business a bit (low margins, etc.) and do not really ask for much:
Don’t crash
Arrive at the intended destination
Deliver bags with same flight you arrive on.
No peanuts, dinners, or cocktails required.
Sorry to hijack the forum on such topics…
I’m done. Farewell Air Canada.
Yup me too!!! I have had nothing but problems with AC, I love Westjet…I’m luck to live right across the border from Detroit…now I only fly out of the U.S. to my destinations!!!
Details? The luggage was lost - unacceptable - period. Gee sorry we lost your luggage and caused you an inconvenience but please dear customer do not hold it against us - we are really sorry! What a load of *(&^.
JC
weather is not the airlines fault. Your #1 thing is don’t crash! OK we side on the safe side as what the others do, take a look at Air France crash in Toronto, Jets Go and their horible safety record and one of the reasons they are no longer around. Livivng in Newf you get screwed, what a load of crap. You want screwed wait unti we do stop flying there and see the frequency of flights you will have left at your disposal. One last thing the majority of us strongly believe in holding our routes in remote places keeping our Country together, where corporate believes there is no money in flying some of these routes. There are worse things to cry about in this world than a misplaced bag and by the way how log was your connection time in Toronto?
I’ve flown AC for over 25 years all over the world, travelling with a bike or on business. Last July was the FIRST time ever that I lost a bag with AC (United, SAS, BA, Air India, Continental, USAir had all lost my bags previously) and it was for a cycling vacation in Europe. Arrived, Zurich, and bike shows up but my other bag was back in Toronto. It had all my clothing. So here I am in Zurich, with a bike and a pair of jean and a T-shirt. Since AC only has one flight per day to Zurich, I lose a day of my cycling vacation waiting for my bag to arrive. It was not the end of the world. AC gave me the opportunity to have the bag delivered to my hotel, but I told them that I would be at the Airport to greet the bag as soon as the next flight landed. I got my bag, drove to Interlaken and 4 hours later (2 driving and 2 riding) I’m at the foot of the Jungfrau one of the higher 4000 m peaks in Switzerland. Sweet. So I had to delay things by a day…not the end of the world ? Sure, it was tense for a while wondering if I’d lose 25% of my vacation time waiting, but things were tracked, well and I was kept well informed by the web and the AC call centre.
I’m not sure if you guys have seen how all the bags get sorted and put on planes over short connections in these giant airports like O’Hare or Heathrow (or even something smaller like Toronto for that matter), but man, it actually amazes me how precisely the bags actually show up. I’m surprised they even show up at all.
Way to many variables to get into here but in Toronto it is a logistical nightmare as we operate under 4 terminals due to the ongoing construction
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