vincevoltaire

My family and I travelled to Japan about a month ago. We checked-in in Vancouver, and the lady who served us at the checkin counter committed quite a few mistakes which completely screwed up our flight experience. Her first mistake was not telling us that she was unable to book any seats for us as it was full (we arrived with 2 hours to spare, and somehow, Air Canada overbooked a flight which we had reserved over 6 months ago). Her next mistake was confidently telling us (twice!) that we did not need to pick up our checked-in luggage in Tokyo on our way to Nagoya. Her third mistake was by entering my wife as a child in the ticket from Tokyo to Nagoya.

To continue, after checking in thinking that everything was ok, we had lunch and when we arrived at the gate, we were told that we did not have seats and should have reported as soon as possible. We basically had a chance to not fly at all. They eventually managed to find us all seats, but they put each of us in separate places on the airplane (I have 3 kids: 12, 9, and 7). This next part is not their fault, but my son ended up getting airsick in the middle of the flight, and since none of us were seated close to him, his kind neighbour helped me out while he was vomiting into the bag. My wife got paged, and it was at that point that one of the stewardesses finally apologized to us for them not working hard enough to get us all seated together. By the time we arrived in Tokyo, my son was barely standing, and no one in Air Canada offered any sort of wheelchair. So he was leaning on me the whole time. We arrived at the gate to our connecting flight to Nagoya, and we were scolded by the Japanese officials for not picking up our luggage. We told them that Air Canada assured us that we did not need to pick-up our luggage in Tokyo, and they icily told us, 'well, they made a mistake'. We had to go back and pick-up our luggage from the baggage claim. Time was short so we rushed back only to find out that we couldn't go through because of the third mistake mentioned above. The Japanese officials basically had to re-type our ticket! We barely made our connecting flight.

So I sent Air Canada an email with all the details. I got a response back (which I appreciated) from Michelle Sturge (apparently, that's the name they use for these types of correspondences) with an offer of a 15% off for all the troubles they caused. At first, I thought that that was a great touch, until I saw all the limitations they put in: can not be combined with any offer or discount (I'm part of their mailing list, and in the emails I regularly receive from them, they always offer 15% off); limited to only 2 people (there's 5 in my family); offer expires in 1 year (I hardly travel). They basically offered me nothing for our troubles.

I guess the lesson here is that when flying with Air Canada, just assume the worst service to be safe.

lcohen999

I'm just wondering why you didn't book seats together when you booked the ticket.

Not to diminish the frustration which was caused, but 6 months out, there should have been room to get seats together, no?

vincevoltaire

I definitely should have done that. The flights were very expensive so I used Expedia for some, Aeroplan miles for one, and a different Expedia transaction for one. I assumed that if I came in to the airport with "enough time to spare", it should be a non-issue. I obviously was wrong.

canforce

Not to limit the trouble that AC may have caused you, but booking different family members using different methods and not on the airlines website is plain asking for trouble.

If you had booked the flights on AC at the start you would easily have gotten 5 seats together six months out and 4 fifths of the issues you had on the flight wouldnt have been issues at all.

ChrisA330

or had you checked in online 24 hours prior to departure. Overbooking a flight and not getting a seat assignment has nothing to do with when you booked your ticket. The order in which you checked in does.

vincevoltaire

Booking under 1 method is what I normally do. Unfortunately, the cost for all of us was prohibitive, and I did not have enough points for everybody. So the way I did it was: book one using the Aeroplan miles; book 2 using Expedia; hope that the price goes down in the next X weeks - when it didn't, I booked the rest using Expedia.

Not sure about 4-fifths - that would only have been 1/5 of the issues. We would still have been stopped in Tokyo twice due to the checkin lady's mistakes and none of the stewardesses would have offered my son a wheelchair and the compensation would still be insincere.

mountainboy

You only made one "mistake" -- you missed a trick that helps. After booking via all the different methods, you should have phoned AC and asked them to add an annotation on each ticket, cross-referencing it to each of the other independent tickets. Each booking remains a seperate PNR, but some AC subsystems are aware of this and handle it right. It also seems that agents apply greater care to such bookings; probably due do their automatic systems coughing up on those.. forcing the agents to handle them.

All the other mistakes were made by AC. Including their "Sorry, but here is jack sh.." response. If they had done the right thing in that last instance, you wouldn't have posted this story.

neuron

from what I read, j_s noted you had 5 complaints

1) not seated together
2) given incorrect info on luggage causing Japanese officials telling you to get your luggage
3) entering your wife as a child (which really went no where in your post)
4) your child getting sick while sitting alone
5) no wheelchair for your son.
6) apology accompanied by a certificate with poor T&C.

So, from the 5 complaints (yes, there are 6 but I have no idea if 3 is relevant), only #2 is AC's fault. Yes, it sucks that you received the incorrect info.

You probably had a few times to group the family together but failed to do so - a) at booking; b) at online checkin; and c) asking around you. I have never seen a case where families separated have not had people acquiesce to accommodate young children.

Also, did you ask anyone for a wheelchair for your child?

Often it pays to be proactive, esp when travelling with children. Asking will not hurt but it certainly can help you!

Perhaps if the cert is not to your liking, you may consider writing back and asking for miles. They may say no, but at this point, if you aren't going to use it, nothing to lose!

mountainboy

Hearsay.

Neither you nor I was there to verify that he "failed to do so".

vincevoltaire

As mentioned in my post, #4 was not their fault. Sorry for not mentioning the effect of number 3, but it is actually quite relevant - that caused a 10 to 15 minute delay; the Japanese officials had to recreate the ticket after verifying that indeed my wife's name is the one that was booked. If poor service is the norm in the industry, then I would agree with you that only #2 is AC's fault, but I have higher standards. Here's what should have happened:

1) the counter lady should have told us, "make sure you report directly to the gate as I was not able to get seats for you".
2) the counter lady should have NOT told us, "you do NOT need to pick up your checked-in bags in Tokyo"
3) the counter lady should have entered my wife as an adult. As a software developer who has worked with enterprise systems requiring databases, there should have been a consistency check in their system which would have prevented what happened - my wife was an Adult from Vancouver to Tokyo and then became a Child from Tokyo to Nagoya
4) when they realized that we were booked in separate seats, according to the stewardess' apology to us (which we appreciated) and as you mentioned, they should have been able to seat us together
5) when they saw that my son could barely stand, they should have offered a wheelchair
6) since I did not ask for any compensation when I emailed them about my complaints, instead of sending an insincere compensation, they should not have sent any compensation at all; again, as I mentioned, they regularly give out "15% off" their published web fares; in fact, I just got an email sent to everyone in their email list for 15% off just 4 days ago

bingocallerb22

Wow, vincevoltaire, sorry for you for your troubles. And sorry for some of the responses. All those shoulda coulda woulda suggestions are because air travel has become ultra-complicated... so for a traveller who doesn't live on FT... how could you know all this? They / we know to link tickets, to check-in at 24 hrs, get seat selections, to ask the FA for seat possibilities, be proactive, offer alternatives to them, check what they do etc. etc, ad nauseum.
They / we know because we were exactly in your shoes once upon a time and, because experience is a great teacher, we learned by doing some of the exact same “errors” you made. In fact, we still do when we get lazy or busy... because air travel is excessively complicated now. That is why we seek help from AC agents, to help us... but as your story goes, sometimes not. You have valid reasons for thinking AC let you down.
I bet you link your tickets in the future

vincevoltaire

Definitely valid thoughts on your part for the booking and online checkin. I wasn't aware of that (my bad) until after we got this bad experience (I've never had this bad experience before). On the way back, I did the research and did the online checkin. As for asking around us, the situation was that by the time we got in the plane, it was already at departure time. Pretty much everyone was already seated, and it definitely did not occur to me to go approach 4 other people in the row and ask them to swap seats with us.

For the wheelchair, for sure, next time, I'll ask for one.

I'll let you know what happens with that.

Sebring

I'm curious about point #4. First of all, when I make a booking, admittedly not six months in advance, it tells me what seats have been selected for me by the computer. So even with three PNRs, that would set off alarm bells. What am I missing here?

Secondly, if the flight was oversold, it would have been hard for the flight attendants to seat you together. A group of five is tough. What were the different locations in the plane to begin with? Were you in five distinctly different areas? Over the years I've had flight attendants try to accommodate people that had separated seating but wanted to be together. It's understandable with small children, less so with couples that can't stand to be apart for a few hours. I've been asked to move, and generally agree unless I am being asked to give up an aisle for a middle seat as I hate stepping over people to go to the lavatory. Lots of regular fliers are the same - often accommodating when it is no skin off their back, but less so if it means an effective downgrade in convenience... or if they are comfortably settled in and working/reading, etc.

It's not easy for the crew to find five abreast seating. You might find enough people willing to move to get, say, three or four abreast, but a fifth person might refuse. For people on different locator numbers, this almost always has to be sorted out before you get to the airport. By the time you get to the airport even a flight that is not so heavily booked, say, 80 percent booked, will usually not have five abreast seating open. That's because as people book their seats, or check in, there is a run on window and aisle seats. The airline's computer also distributes seats in a deliberate manner for weight and balance considerations, which are critical.

There is no algorithm in the central computer that anticipates you will want five seats abreast, and with the oversell situation, you're expecting a lot to expect the check-in attendant, gate attendants or even flight attendants to sort this out to your satisfaction.

I'm sorry about the other points, or the tone of staff, it's like other people here have said, this is one of those situations you'll avoid next time no matter which airline you book, and the people here have given some very useful tips

In a situation like this, a transpacific flight, I'd even suggest paying for priority seat selection at the time of booking, because even the day before a heavily booked flight it's probably too late to expect five abreast seating to be available on most flights.

vincevoltaire

Not sure I'm answering your question, but I booked our seats via Expedia.ca (3 people) and Aeroplan (1 person) and another Expedia.ca transaction (me). I can't quite remember being told what seats were selected for me, but I'm assuming that there weren't any because when we got to the departure gate in Vancouver, there were no seats at all for any of us.

That's what I would expect as well. But the stewardess apologized to my wife and said, "we should have been able to do a better job re-seating you together" (or words to that effect); maybe the stewardess just apologized out of sympathy?

Yes, definitely good tips all around.

Tangoer

I bet the OP cannot wait for AC's forthcoming discount Asian airline! "Because Owners Care".