I travel quite a bit. That includes international and transcontinental flights. I have never flown Air Canada before, but found tickets for my wife and I slightly cheaper than the competition. I quickly learned there was no savings. And if there were, it may have been better to pay a bit more.
Why do I say no savings? Some airlines also one free checked bag for international travel. The 25 dollar charge for bags alone negates the savings on these tickets. Furthermore, they will not guarantee seats without a fee. Not premium seat fees. Just seat confirmation fees. Had we paid those fees, the $100 dollars round trip baggage fees would be joined by an additional $140 in seat assignment fees. Not quite pocket change. As it stands, we still don't know if we will be seated together on either leg of our return flights.
But the corner cutting doesn't stop at the baggage and seat fees. Airlines have gotten cheap on meals, but even a short domestic flight in the US will normally net you a drink, cookie and peanuts. On a transcontinental flight, Air Canada does not even provide a package of peanuts. If you want food, you pay. My wife and I had a tight connection and couldn't buy food. So we bought some on the flight. The food wasn't the highest price I've seen. I had the chicken shawarma pita, which was modest with the chicken, but decent flavor.
You can tell a lot about the overall sanitation of a plane by visiting the restroom. The lavatory on our first flight was barely up to snuff for a construction site portapotty. The larger aircraft for our transcontinental flight had slightly better bathrooms, but they were not maintained and quickly degraded. They also ran out of paper towels and did not replace them. These are not stock photos. I took these photos myself today.
Restroom on the two hour flight.
Restroom from Toronto to Vancouver had no paper towels and the floor was sticky. Nasty.
Air Canada does have On Demand seatback entertainment. The touchscreens are painfully slow. It's like a touchscreen on an old 286. The technology is clunky, like an old Commodore 64. The seats did have USB chargers built in. Always a plus.
My screen reset several times and had a crack across the screen. I'm not sure if the crack had anything to do with it resetting or not. But it was visible while watching a movie. The movie selection was very good, although the quality of the stream was low and the controls clunky and inefficient.
The overhead luggage compartments were very restrictive. My small carry on did nit fit over the middle section where we were seated. I was able to find a place for it in an exterior bin a few rows forward.
The seats were average economy sized seats. Some are slightly bigger, but these weren't the smallest. But they were well worn. The padding seemed long past it's worth. The seats were hard and not comfortable.
I didn't find the flight attendants to be extraordinarily friendly. They were not rude. But definitely not congenial, either. The announcements on the PA system were almost impossible to hear. Communication about clearing customs was also confusing. We stopped in the baggage claim atea to ask the air canada desk if we need on recheck our luggage. The agent told us we could have just read the sign. Very rude.
Needless to say, I am not impressed with Air Canada. This will be our first and last experience with the airline. Very unfortunate.
