Air Canada Treatment

On June 14th I was scheduled to fly non-stop from Montreal to DC at 2:30pm (arrive at 4pm). Before leaving my hotel I printed out my boarding pass and checked my e-mails…no alerts about weather or delays. I arrived at the airport (YUL) and was told the flight was canceled due to weather. Air Canada reps would only give me an 800 number to call to rebook; they won’t help you when you are standing at that ticket counter right in front of them. I phoned and was booked on a 4:30pm flight connecting through Ottawa that would get me into DC at 8pm. Fine. The 4:30pm flight never took off due to mechanical problems and the second plane that arrived also had mechanical issues so we ended up leaving at 6:30pm for Ottawa but was told by the flight attendant not to worry since the flight to DC from Ottawa was delayed and would get us into DC at 12am. Fine. We arrived at Ottawa to be told by Air Canada that the DC flight was canceled and so now I was booked on the 6:50am flight Sunday morning. Air Canada would not help with hotel….since according to them the problem was “weather related”….not mechanical, (despite a 2 hour delay with two of their malfunctioning aircraft!) The 800 hospitality number they gave for hotels in Ottawa informed that there were no rooms available. So I spent the night in the Ottawa airport, as did a number of other passengers. Air Canada reps in Ottawa (including the “supervisor”) were rude, unhelpful and downright incompetent. With 8 passengers all staning there for the DC flight, the supervisor was insulting and kept getting angrier and angrier when the DC passengers asked for hotel rooms for the night. He finally just stormed off and left the 8 of us standing at the counter…never to return. It will be a long time before I book with Air Canada again.

-Sent by Michael Jones

photo credit: abdallahh