Once every year, always in early or mid-February, I travel from YYZ to LHR on the daytime flight, AC868.

In the past the bag drop process for this flight was always quick and painless.

Yesterday, however, arriving at YYZ just after 7 am, I found a line stretching half-way across the terminal, and it took me a full hour to finally get to a desk. Only about half the available desks were open.

Things seemed to run so well in the past. Why was it all so different yesterday? Was I just unlucky - did they perhaps have people off sick? Or is it now always like this?