pricesquire

Just wanted to throw up a quick review of a first timer to the realm of AC.

I bought a pair of AC J tickets earlier 2014, back when Star Alliance had that crazy J sale to Europe.

Trip: MCO - YYZ on AC Rouge; YYZ - FCO on AC; FCO - YYZ on AC; YYZ - MCO on AC Rouge.

AC Rouge:

Overall, pleasantly surprised. Yeah, the J on those planes kinda sucks...very much an intra-Euro styled flight (blocked middle seat; regular seats for pax). What I was pleasantly surprised with was the staff. Happy is an understatement. They were cracking jokes on the intercom, bending over backwards for pax, remembering pax by name and destination, asking questions, etc. The hard product was nothing to write home about, but the soft product was at least an 8/10. Food wasn't Michelin star or anything, but for a 2.5 hour flight from FL to YYZ, I was shocked they'd serve anything at all that wasn't pre packed sandwiches and/or snacks.

AC:

Very, very, very disappointed, both in hard product and soft product. Easily the worst J seat, and worst J setup, I've ever been on.....I genuinely don't think they could have done a worse job if they tried. Never been a fan of DL's basic hard product, but AC's makes DL's look like Cathay Pacific! In full recline mode, the seat has a bar right behind your lower back. It's impossible to get comfortable. To make matters worse, the seat is too short. I'm exactly 6 feet...not huge, not short. I couldn't sit in the seat without my feet touching the end. Really bad...could get no sleep..

The soft product was even worse. The food was identical to AC Rouge (which is fine for a 2.5 hour US-CA flight). Basically the same meal but this time it was burnt and dry.

The staff was awful. Two long hauls and we had 1 nice person working the J cabin (they ended up moving him into Y and we never saw him again). Rude, inattentive, disrespectful, and sarcastic. It was almost like they didn't want to be there and had no interest in being a flight attendant.

Long story short:

I'd fly AC Rouge again for a flight under 3-4 hours.

Wouldn't fly AC on a TATL/TPAC ever again, even at $1.4k for J. Terrible.

durberville

I'm sorry to hear that. I've always found AC J long-haul service to be quite nice, on par with DL and BA. Each to his or her own I suppose!

Jasper2009

Sorry tohear about your experience.

I'm surprised you disliked the pods that much. Most people quite like the pod layout since the seats are fully flat, are quite private and all pax have easy aisle access.

As for the meal: The meal on the TATL flight should have been substantially better:

On MCO-YYZ you should have received a small salad + choice of 2-3 main courses + dessert, served all at once

On YYZ-FCO you should have received an appetizer + salad + choice of 4 main courses + cheese plate + choice of dessert and fresh fruit. I'm usually not a big fan of the wines offered, but the food usually is quite good IMO.

rankourabu

Comments pretty much bang on from what one hears from first time AC J travellers, especially about staff and food.

Remember this is the AC board, and most people here love everything AC, and are frequent AC flyers, so don't expect anyone agreeing with you

winnipegrev

Actually a decently large number of posters here hate most things AC, so I'd expect a good amount of agreement with the OP here based on the 'haters' alone.

AC even with the aging pod still has about the best J hard product TATL and better than most TPAC, excluding YVR-HKG (for some reason many carriers are still going 2-2-2 e.g. UA 777, HU 787, CZ 787, JL 787). Those used to CX J or BR J I could see finding the AC seat inferior but AC's product is still above the average. It is certainly better than most of DL's fleet (DL 330s and 747s have a better product). The DL 777s have the same J seat as AC, so fly that if you really prefer

AC's FAs can be inconsistent. I've seen some shameful AC FA behaviour but 99% of my flights I don't find/see the FAs being "rude, disrespectful, or sarcastic". Makes me wonder how others are treating them to be getting such service

We know the meals AC loads on longhaul aren't the same as shorthaul, so I don't know what the OP is referring to as the same meal unless he is talking about breakfast. It would be very nice if AC could mix up the breakfast options... add some tomato to the omelette, peppers on other flights, etc.

I'm also exactly 6 feet and can stretch in the pod fully, OP on your return if one exists just squirm backwards once it is fully flat and there is another 6"+ you can push the pillow back in and get some foot space.

rankourabu

Ah...so its the OP's fault...of course..
Surely it can't be the airline voted rudest staff in NA

ensco

I just took the Dreamliner roundtrip to Haneda, and I had both experiences described with the cabin staff. I flew J outbound, and PE on the return.

Outbound - couldn't have been nicer. They were pleasant, and they were genuinely excited about being on the 787.

Return - staff were taciturn, gruff, not very happy. They were not unprofessional, but you sure didn't want to ask them anything. There was never any mention of the 787.

I wondered if the layovers weren't long enough, and the homeward crew was exhausted. That wouldn't have explained all of it, but no FA on that flight in either direction was young.

pricesquire

As to Rouge: again, pleasantly surprised. Great staff, great food (considering the length of trip), and overall easy come easy go.

As to AC....I didn't mind the pods, in and of themselves. Pods are fine. Privacy is fine. I'm not one of those "need to be within ear shot of my partner at all times"...and the pod itself is quite refreshing (compared to 2-2-2). The problem was the seat in fully lie-flat mode: (1) someone who is 6 feet should be able to lie flat without touching the plastic barrier; and (2) the seat - mid back region - was quite uncomfortable.

As for hard product on AC, a few instances that come to mind:

1) Seats were overall quite dirty upon seating. There was still trash left over from the previous pax on both YYZ-FCO and FCO-YYZ. Crumbs were everywhere on both flights (trying not to be hyperbolic - I'm quite serious - crumbs on floor, armrest, and seat.

2) No noise cancellation headphones?!?!

3) AVOD was just weird. Why weren't episodes listed in order? Selection: small. About 1/5th the size of DL or AA.

As for soft product:

1) FAs never came around to collect trash. When they did, they only took 'obvious' things - i.e. food and dinner tray. As for little things, i.e. plastic wrap from blanket, plastic from amenity kits, empty cups, etc, they never came around to pick it up! Again, this happened on both flights.

2) On the return, one of the J bathrooms didn't work. My wife went in, came out, told an FA it was broken, and as she left (I was still standing there), the FA went "well she obviously broke it"...to which I then pointed out it was actually broken. All I got from the FA was: "well that's not good."

3) No eye contact, no please/thank you's, nothing....I'm NOT a stickler for formalities, but when someone says thank you or acknowledges effort, the FA should acknowledge back. This went beyond formalities to plain ignoring.

4) FA's consistently tried to keep J pax out of the front bathroom. I understand that area is their prep area, but c'mon, there's a bathroom there for a reason. Stop trying to 'convince' me that the bathrooms in the back are the ones that "should be used" (quote from FA).

5) FA's just threw down food, using tongs...spilled all over the floor near row 12 because the FA was in such a rush. No apologies, just a shrug and an 'oops'.

6) Accidentally fell asleep on outbound right before meal service. Apparently another pax told the FA I fell asleep (it was obvious!) - to which the FA said 'guess he's not eating this flight'

On another note, I didn't mean to imply the food was outright bad...it was just too close to what we had on Rouge (Rouge: salmon with jasmine rice and veg medley; AC: cod with jasmine rice and veg medley). Veg medley was a single broccoli and 2 carrots.

These are just some of the things they noticed.

FWIW: 9 day trip to Italy, had - with the exception of 2 FAs - the same staff on both inbound and outbound.

winnipegrev

Did you use the headphones built into the seat? They are noise cancelling.

As to AVOD I'm not the expert and DL and AA have too aircraft types to compare... but the AA 77W does have a great system with many more movies than AC. Their 772s though which are 4x as numerous have 53 movies vs. AC's 138 at last count. The TV episode layout is very frustrating though, but that problem has been fixed with AC's updated seats on the 787 and going into 777s. Finally they are listing TV shows by title, then subtitle all episodes below in a hierarchical fashion.

Soft service varies so not too many comments on that other than I agree AC seems to have difficulty cleaning the pods. I have noticed some quite filthy including sticky drink spray on the hard plastic pod wall. Usually more minor details, but they should be clean after ~6 hours+ on the ground in YYZ which most widebodies have.

Has anyone else noticed around 1/2 the pods have an extreme yellow tinge to the IFE display? My latest theory is the screens are badly ****** from FAs going around after the safety video slamming them shut way harder than they need to, but the yellow makes videos difficult to watch. AC if you're reading this I sure hope this is being looked into - rip the screens out of the Rouged 763s surplus pods if you have to but the current experience is bad squinting to make out the picture all the way to HKG.

pricesquire

Yes Re: AVOD!! Thought I was either that tired, hallucinating, or just plain mad. Eventually I had my wife take a look and she agreed: the people were yellow!

Funny you mentioned slamming the AVOD display. I forgot to close mine AFTER the safety video, so one of the FAs comes over to close it for me...just as he's doing it, an advertisement starts rolling, and he holds the screen open and says "oh wait, another ad, were supposed to make sure you watch this" - was he being funny, or is that something they actually are supposed to do?!

winnipegrev

I bet he was serious! Back in 2007/8 when the system was new almost ALL FAs would cut the commercials off at the very beginning and send all the screens to the 'Welcome Aboard' splashscreen to eliminate the noise and annoyance (this was before gate-to-gate AVOD was approved). Maybe 2 years later, all FAs stopped doing that simultaneously and played through all commercials without terminating them as was the custom before. My guess is certain executives of companies advertising flew AC and realized this was happening, so AC had to put a stop to it.

Can one of the resident FAs comment?

zorn

If you actually believe this, you are delusional.

jbb

This has been one of my little bugbears re: AC in-flight service for a long time. I have come to expect this in Y and just shrug when I get this sort of service in AC J.

CanadaDH

This is my biggest complaint about the AC pods. I look forward to the hot towel service upon boarding so I can use it to clean my pod. We shouldn't have to do that.

theseatbelt

You will find the 787 pods to be much better than the blue pods. They also have more bed length. I can attest to that.