mcgahat

A little background. I have flown AC a lot but mainly between US and Canada so no reall experience on the atlantic portion and avoided in the past because of what I remember to be a hastle for USA-Intl-USA connection. That seemed to have cleared up and I found a really cheap fare from IND-FRA via YYZ so gave it a shot. Overall AC was fine in the air and no complaints really and the trasnit (being all AC and all T1) was a breeze and like the MLL a lot.

Now the part that I thought was really bad was the ground experience yesterday for our morning flight out of FRA. First, they are in a pretty remote location especially if you are coming from the train but I cant really fault them for that as they probably took what they could get but how about a little signage? Even over the check in locations their name doesnt show up and there was no indication of what line was for what. There was one guy out there trying to explain the lines but I am sure his only english ability was business or economy. I appreciate the fact that I am in Germany and not Canada or the US so I do not expect fluant english but a touch better would be nice. There was three lines and three agents. One for Business, economy and bag drop only. The lines actually were not overly long but took a pretty long time considering the length and I think there was also a YUL flight going out about the same time. The check in was not great but the worst part was the gate experience. It was really a mess and took forever to board the plane. They didnt seem to start the boading until about 9:30 or even after and had to process everyones info as they boarded so it took a very long time on a completely full 777. The pilot announced the delay was because they held the plane a bit for transit pax and they may well have but they couldnt even get the people in line processed berfore the 10:00AM scheduled departure. The online departure time showed 10:22 but I am sure it was much after that. You would have thought that it was the first time they had ever done this.

So, is it always like this in FRA or did I just catch them on a bad day? For the check in, I am guessing most people are transiting AC to another carrier in FRA and never see the check in area so they probably do not see a lot of O&D traffic but the gate delay caused A LOT of people with connections in YYZ to miss their connections. So, if what the pilot said (he was really professional in his announcements) was correct then they held the flight in FRA for some connection only to cause people in YYZ to miss their. I know at least 3 people that missed their YYZ-IND flight because my wife and I just made it and as the gate agent opened the door to let us board told them they were out of luck as they arrived just as re-printed out boarding cards. I am sure there were others to other cities.