August 17th - Yet another delayed Air Canada flight
Simon Calder's Independent Travel Podcast
The Independent
3.6 • 628 Ratings
🗓️ 17 August 2022
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, I’m on board yet another delayed Air Canada flight. I don’t even know if there’s such a thing as an on-time departure on the Canadian national carrier but certainly, the experience of hopping around Canada has been much inferior to budget airlines in the UK.
When flights are disrupted, passengers want to be kept informed. But on my series of late flights from Chicago to Montreal, Quebec City to Toronto, Winnipeg to Toronto, and Toronto to London - gate staff, cabin crew, and pilots have opted to keep quiet and let passengers stew. It’s a useful reminder that the likes of EasyJet, Jet2, and Ryanair are generally good at communication.
Other Canadian airlines, such as Air Transat and WestJet, are available.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, this is Simon Calder with today's independent travel podcast. |
| 0:07.0 | And you might remember a couple of weeks ago, I was actually speaking to you from an Air Canada flight |
| 0:14.0 | that had arrived, oh I think three hours late, from Chicago to Montreal Airport. And at the time I said it was the worst |
| 0:24.3 | flight I've had this year but after gosh another three Air Canada flights I can now |
| 0:33.7 | actually confirm that the airline has moved into unassailable first place in worst |
| 0:41.0 | airline of the year. Everything I have done involving Air Canada for flights has been a bit of a |
| 0:49.6 | shampals. So after I arrived very very late at Montreal, I took a room and then later from Quebec City to Toronto, |
| 1:05.0 | which is the biggest airport, the biggest city in Canada. That flight was, I think, an hour late. |
| 1:13.6 | We spent half an hour at that time waiting on the ground for a gate to become available. |
| 1:20.6 | You might think that at the biggest hub for Air Canada, that gates were kind of organised, but apparently not. |
| 1:33.0 | And that was reinforced today when I came in on a delayed flight from Winnipeg to Toronto. |
| 1:39.0 | Now, that's a journey of about two hours. |
| 1:42.2 | I count myself lucky because the previous flight to |
| 1:46.0 | Toronto was something like five hours late. Mine was only getting on for an hour late, |
| 1:52.0 | of which probably half an hour was sitting on the ground here at Toronto airport waiting for a gate to be changed and then arranged. |
| 2:03.6 | Toronto Pearson Airport itself absolutely takes the price for worst airport of the year. |
| 2:11.6 | I have a credit card which allows me to get into a very few airport lounges. And unfortunately, even though it was valid, I couldn't get in because there was a 45 minute wait |
| 2:26.3 | at the lounge to get in. They said we've got too many passengers and that presumably was because |
| 2:32.3 | so many Air Canada flights were heavily delayed. |
| 2:37.0 | I'm now speaking to you from seat 55A on a Boeing 777. |
| 2:45.0 | Now the thing about these planes is that when they were brought in they had nine seats abreast and that was all really nice and comfortable. |
| 2:51.6 | Then gradually airlines started putting 10 abreast in and guess what? |
... |
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