Actually, YYCOllie, I wouldn't read that kind of detailed stuff anymore.
I've been working on a book about airfares for a long while. About 3 years ago, I found the mother of all airpasses [I know of about 100 now] which was called the Visit South America Pass which allowed 4 sectors (connections didn't count) for $560 and was run by LAB, Ecuatoriana and VASP. You could go from Rio to Quito, connection through Manaus for example, and that was one airpass sector. I spent a week on this, tracking down VASP people in YYZ and MIA, verifying routings etc. Shortly after wasting this time, it turned out that VASP was in deep trouble and they cut all international routings, I think they lost their stake in EU, and all that I have left to show for it is an elegant brochure and a phone bill with entries to Miami on it.
Analysis of material like CIC 77/81 I leave to specialists like yourselves with an urgent personal need, and then I read your summaries. Sometimes you have to trust.
The one who I pity is the poor bzstzrd who had to WRITE it.
Thanks people for the excellent advice and knowledge. Without which I think I would have been out a few yen.
I gave up waiting for AC scheduling to call me so I called the local Air Canada office here in Nagoya. Surprisingly, they too insisted that I travel to Narita to get my flight. I said no-way and quoted the CIC reference. I was put on hold for 5 minutes - agent comes back on the phone and asks for my reference numbers so that she can book me to NRT. So I proceeded to give her the details for 4 affected tickets which she did not expect.
Anyway - the ball is rolling and I will call back tomorrow to get my flight details. The agent said that the NGO-NRT flights are very full for my dates. My attitude is that this is not my problem - If Air Canada decides to pull out of a market, they better have a plan for their passengers.
Overall - I am really shocked that Air Canada treats their customers like this. If it were not for flyertalk - I am sure the outcome would have been different.
Thanks again.
Dave - Nagoya, Japan.
[This message has been edited by davistev (edited 09-20-2002).]
Air Canada has agreed to fly us to Narita from Nagoya at Christmas. We just have to send our tickets to the Tokyo ticketing office. I am still "negotiating" with my Canadian purchased tickets which they insist must go through the travel agent. I have been insisting otherwise thanks to the advice from this board and I will need to call back again tomorrow.
Not in the clear yet but it is much better than before.
I find it truly sad that passengers have to force AC to honour their own rules - it should be done proactively by AC. If AC acted proactively more often I am sure customer satisfaction would increase significantly as would employee morale (ie. employees actually being able to help customers).
__________________ Hyatt excels in customer service
My apologies for ranting on about my predicament but I thought I would keep the world updated on my problem with Air Canada.
Air Canada has agreed to book my wife and child on the NRT to Nagoya ANA flight but they said they can only waitlist them as the flight is full. I wanted to know at what point will Air Canada get a confirmed seat for them if they do not clear the waitlist - I did not get an answer. I then asked that they be put on JL or rerouted via Osaka, Seoul, HKG, TPE or even heck, LAX and placed on Varig to Nagoya. They said no.
Does a waitlist reservation satisfy Air Canada's obligation to my family? By the way, we are talking Jan 2nd here.
davistev, thanks for posting the updates. I'm actually quite interested to know what will happen.
I'm not sure if waitlisting satisfies their requirement although it makes sense to try to fly with a partner airline.
However, you have ever right to ask for your flight to be on another airline (OAL) as long as they have a protection agreement with them which the agent can find out in CIC*77.
02JAN...wow...I don't know even waiting listing is going to help you.
As far as I understand the fare rules, and I may be wrong here, but when a FIM (Flight Interrupt Manifest) is issued, the issuing carrier must pay the carrier of carriage the price of a full Y. Normally a FIM is issued at last minute at the airport.
However, if the ticket is reissued, which in this case, AC clearly has the time to do and states the reason why (i.e. IROPS), the issuing carrier now has to only pay 40% of a full Y to the carrier of carriage.
So...flying OAL does cost AC but it's not the full fare.
The reason I'm really interested in your situation is I am curious to see how "World Class" this airline professes to be. As you noted earlier, AC made the decision to pull out of Nagoya knowing full well that they would need to accomodate pax.
You could wait a month and then insist on travel on OAL. Then see what they would do.
I just arrived back from BKK last night, I leave for MIA tomorrow...I'll go through the actual contract of carriage since CIC*77 should just be a summarization but I could see if there is something else you could show them.
Just curious...have you tried the Elite desk in YUL? Mind you...it was the SE Aeroplan Desk that told me "too bad so sad" last year when I had a sked change to one pnr (Aeroplan reward) that impacted 2 revenue tickets. Only when I found CIC*77 and showed AC that this what should have been done is when I got an apology from someone in YUL but this was 2 months after my travel dates.
The more I think about how AC treated me and having then to have the AP agent tell me to cancel my vacation with my wife(planned 8 months earlier) it makes my blood boil even just thinking about it now. And now they are trying to do the same to you.
I have now finalised this whole fiasco to a satisfactory conclusion. I had 5 tickets all together for the NGO-YVR-YYZ route (3 in C Class and 2 in discount Y class). Air Canada pulled out of Nagoya, Japan for the winter and left me holding the "bag" in Nagoya without a satisfactory alternative.
Air Canada originally said tough luck and to get refund from travel agent (or resubmit to Aeroplan for mileage recredit). After posting this info to FlyerTalk and getting some extremely good advice from people here - I was then able to re-approach Air Canada with some "knowledge" in hand.
After some waffling on their part and some questions about how I was able to pull information from *CIC77 Air Canada Tokyo has agreed to reroute all the tickets through Narita and pay for the Nagoya to Narita NH flights ( all confirmed - at one time they said they could not get a confirmation.)
The tickets originally issued by www.toureast.ca are being reissued by Air Canada here in Japan. At one time they said that I had to deal with the agency that issued the tickets and so on. All in all, this was not a great experience with Air Canada.
They took my money and miles for 5 tickets. They pulled out of a Nagoya with no plans on how to serve their passengers except for a refund. I complained and got nowhere. Flyertalk educated me with the posts above. I re-approached Air Canada. Air Canada initially only offered flights out of Tokyo with no connections to NRT from NGO. Then they offered unconfirmed connections, then they finally offered confirmed business class seats on the NRT-NGO. The whole process took about 7 weeks.
Great that you were able to work things out. AC in Japan have got to be the most unhelpful bunch of people that I have met in the airline business. I walked out of the AC office in Tokyo two weeks ago saying that in future AC would be a last resort for me and my family. And I meant it.
__________________
Le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m'effraie. (Pascal)
It's great that everything got resolved.
What a shame that AC acted so childishly. Does it know that we are the customer and that we now have THE power of knowledge via the Internet and FT!!
__________________
Why waste time plotting for direct flights when you can go from A to B through multiple segments.
I also posted this in the Star Alliance Guides thread, but it's probably appropriate to post it here as well.
Just to give you a hint of some of the incredibly arcane yet equally useful information in this little gem (the Star Alliance Guide,) check page 32 of the Reference Guide, regarding "Involuntary" (rerouting):
Quote:
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">When an airline undergoes a schedule change or..., the two Star Alliance carriers agree to waive the endorsement requirement between themselves, for the following:
a) non-restricted tickets
b) restricted tickets
c) Frequent flyer redemption tickets
d) SATA (OOO) tickets closed to the two Star Alliance csarriers
...</font>
Seems there might have been a much easier way to resolve the problem.
Knowledge is power, and this little booklet will make you a lot more knowledgable.
Another update my friends. Air Canada has not treated us passengers who live in the Nagoya area very well at all over the last while. You see, I live and work in Nagoya. My colleagues are mostly North American and Air Canada WAS our carrier of choice to get to Canada and the USA.
Almost everyone I know was affected by Air Canada's pullout from Nagoya, Japan. We have had relatives rerouted to Osaka and narita with only some getting arrangements made for ongoing connections to Nagoya. many of my co-workers have had to change their plans. My family and I have to cut short our Christmas vacation in Canada to get back to work on time as we have to stay a night in Narita.
My company and a couple of others in the Nagoya area which are in the Automotive and Aerospace industry cannot rely on Air Canada's schedules anymore. You see - AC advertises a year round schedule and then pulls out for the winter. This is because of light loads. The problem is that this was not the first year this has happened. Yet, AC still loads up a year-round schedule into the res system.
My point is - Air Canada cannot expect to get good loads out of Nagoya if it does not make a commitment to year round Nagoya service. The result is as follows:
1) AC alienates their corporate customers
2) AC alienates the Families of expats in the area (no small number by the way)
3) Corporate Customers and expats have serious doubts about the reliability of schedules issued by AC .
4) NWA lands 747s
5) Customers see NWA take off every day of year
6) Corporate customers and Expats sit on NWA 747 to Detroit and make connections from there.
7) AC wonders why their crap 767 does not get good loads
8) AC alienates their best customers by abandoning them and their families in Osaka and Narita unless they have the knowledge to fight back.
9) NWA offers to comp all Air Canada aeroplan members who live in Nagoya the exact status on WorldPerks.
10) Everyone now has status on NWA in my company and others in Nagoya - NorthWest airlines is our airline now and Air Canada is for the Japanese honeymooners going to Vancouver and Banff.
Strange pattern but this is a true 10 step scenario.
Cheers - Dave (soon to lose Elite status with a smile).
Nagoya, Japan
[This message has been edited by davistev (edited 12-28-2002).]
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Guy Betsy: Funny though, because once you try EVA Airways, especially on their Evergreen Deluxe Class, you may never want to take Air Canada again!</font>
For all those Elites and SuperElites out there, I believe they will continue to stick with AC even if that means flying via HKG since they could upgrade to business class and the fare doesn't go up too much at all.
Except that you might find, as a work colleague recently did, that you can fly in JAL business class for not much more than the upgradeable (but not available) AC fare. He had planned to take AC as he had before, but since the flight was cancelled, he went looking for other options. And he was satisfied enough that as Guy Betsy suggested, he may not go back to AC on that route.
He's going to have status with oneworld as well, because of that trip, and several to Europe in BA World Traveller Plus (a.k.a. Y+).
And over all, the willy nilly seasonal cancellations have caused a lot of havoc for others in my office, as we've recently landed a large contract in Denmark, and have opened an office there. KLM has become the carrier of choice for those working that route. It used to be AC.
Hyatt excels in customer service
Air Canada Tokyo has agreed to reroute all the tickets through Narita and pay for the Nagoya to Narita NH flights ( all confirmed - at one time they said they could not get a confirmation.)
