Many thanks for the thread that provided information about the Canadian Transportation Agency -- at least it provides some measure of comeback, when Air Canada ignores letters about atrocious service.

The short form: after travelling the world, largely using accumulated Aeroplan miles, business class to Hong Kong and back from Bangkok, and return from other high points such as Mexico, San Francisco, Peru/Brazil and Venice/Barcelona, a simple trip from Ottawa to Saint John, NB, was a complete abortion of air travel. We've run into nothing in all our travels that comes close!

A 2-hour flight took 24 hours for Air Canada to execute, when we could have driven the distance in less than half of that. And although there were many options available to get us quickly to our destination in this re-knowned foggy city (bussing to Fredericton for an alternate departure flight has been a decades-established AC practice, or using a plane that can take-off in fog, like the Toronto-bound one that left while ours back to Ottawa was being cancelled).

The problems: clearly the main one was no flight. But in addition, no agents to talk to, a cancellation (not a flight replacement) that left us stranded at 9:00pm without re-course or a future travel replacement, no coverage whatsoever for incidental expenses, like supper, cab to a hotel, the overnight costs until a flight the next day (which we had to go line-up for and book ourselves).

The next day, after the barely 4 hours sleep we were able to get after locating accomodation and getting there, and getting up, re-packing and getting back to the airport, we were confronted with many further delays. The first: the new crew needed extra sleep! (Didn't they know that the night before?? We could have used it, too!) Then, more fog, and more excuses, and no agents, while they bussed "international" passengers to Fredericton for replacement flights, while we sat in fog for many more hours.

When it lifted, we were told that it was our responsibility to continually re-book connecting Air Canada flights to our Ottawa destination (the flights and flight numbers did continually change during the course of the morning wait), even though we booked the whole package as a single flight which Air Canada implemented in segments (via Montreal). This caused further delays when we were mis-informed about travel times by Air Canada staff (yes, we finally did find one!, for all the help we were given).

Air Canada refused to "process" our complaint, which we had e-mailed to the e-mail id circled by the check-in agent as the place to send it. Fortunately (well, we thought so at the time), we were able to locate the name of AC's president and e-mailed him. But the response from one of his lackeys disregarded our concerns about service and our out-of-pocket expenses, barely apologizing, before offering a 15% discount of future travel ... as if we'd even want to use it! They had ignored us as customers, both during this travel, and afterward. And all this, after being high-usage frequent flyer clients. So, who IS, what IS important to AC?

At least we have lodged complaints with the Canadian Air Transportation Agency. But they even told us the queue is very long, backlogged by months. I can see why, if they're all directed at Air Canada, and this is how they now operate. Do we have other options available? Is Federal Court feasible? reasonable? How would we approach that? What else?

Thanks for any help and/or experiences you can share.