Why drive when you can fly?

Hunnybear used her Canadian points to buy us two of the last 30,000-point business-class round trip awards. I’ve heard great things about CP’s business-class transcon service, so we’ve carefully booked this trip to take advantage and, of course to avoid American MD-80s.

We leave Belltown at 7:25 for the 8:30 flight. One advantage of living downtown is that there is a secret freeway that never has any traffic leading directly from our apartment to the airport. Travel time is usually 15 minutes. We arrive at MasterPark at 7:40. The valet runs to our car, gives us a ticket, takes the key and says hop in the shuttle, he’ll bring the bags out of the trunk, which he does. I love this place. Five minutes from rolling into their lot we are at the airport.

Thanks to new partnerships, our first leg to Vancouver is on Alaska. Well, actually it’s on Horizon, kind of a double-nested codeshare. We go to check in at AS, and the agent gets halfway through asking us the security questions when she says, oops, we have only 35 minutes until flight time so we need to go next door to the Horizon counter to check in. I’ve never heard anything like that before, but we do as she says.

Horizon service is not nearly as good as Alaska. The indifferent agent lets us stand for a minute in the MVP line without looking up from her phone call. Then it’s a smileless “can I help you.” No question mark, just a period. I say, “Why yes…yes. I think that you can!” We check the bags through to Toronto, hit the Board Room for a cup of coffee, and head over to gate C2F. The flight boards in a few minutes, takes off on time without the need to return to the terminal to eject any lost passengers, and the scenic flight up to YVR is over in short order.

We breeze through immigration, but our bags do not show up at the customs baggage claim. The lost-baggage agent fills out a form in purple ink to show the guard and tells us not to worry, most likely the bags were inadvertently put right onto our connecting flight instead of being sent through customs. I tell her no problem.

We walk the several miles to Canadian connection checkin where we explain we have bags, but we don’t have bags, and then head a few more miles up to the vaunted Empress Lounge. This place is beautiful, with a castle façade reminiscent of part of the Canadian Shield and a nice view of the airplanes. We get a table by the window with a data jack and plug in. There are not as many phones in here as in most Red Carpet Clubs, but they have the ubiquitous cheese and crackers, waitress service, and an open bar. The hour and a half goes quickly.

The transcon leg is on a 767 with footrests, lots of space between rows, and the nice amount of seat recline in Business Class. It’s pretty much the same as a UA 777, but the seats are older and not as comfortable, without the bells and whistles such as massage, personal videos, and noise-reducing headsets. Upon boarding, there is service aplenty. They pass out a choice of both Vancouver and Toronto local papers! We have a couple plastic glasses of French champagne, but it is a bit sweet for our taste. After takeoff we get nuts, and they have seconds, which UA never has, although the UA serving is bigger to begin with. The menu card shows an appetizer of artichoke heart stuffed with ratatouille and melted cheese and a choice of halibut, beef tenderloin, or chicken.

The appetizer is cold, and I mean really cold. I think it would have been better warm. Congealed melted cheese is not appetizing except on pizza. Hunnybear gets the fish, which is announced as sea bass when it arrives and is a bit overdone. My beef is served well done as usual on airplanes, UA included. It’s edible but too cooked for my taste. Dessert is a very nice choice of chocolate gelato or mango sorbet. No cookies or chocolates.

The movie is once again The Thomas Crown Affair, which I just saw yesterday on UA, but it was still good. I slept through quite a bit of the flight, but woke up in time to chat with the crew who were all very anxious about their futures. Apparently Monday is the big day for Air Canada’s shareholders to decide about the various merger/takeover offers on the table with Canadian. I told them things would work out and not to worry. I don’t know if they’ll really work out, but I do know that worrying isn’t going to get them anywhere.

Due to tail winds, the flight was a very short one. We arrived in Toronto after only 3.5 hours, which we will probably make up for on the way back. The plane looked like it was pulling right up to the front door of our hotel, the Sheraton Gateway. We simply crossed the access road and checked into our huge Platinum-upgrade room. The clerk offered us a corner room on the top floor, but I asked if he had anything with an airplane view so he gave us an even larger Honeymoon deluxe king on the 6th floor (out of 8). I told him that fit in very well with our policy, which is “all honeymoon all the time.” He even hustled personally up to our old room and retrieved the amenity, presenting it to us at the door of our new room. We had two large closets, a sitting area, and a whirlpool bath. All for CAD$99! To top it off, this phone system actually displayed my name when we called Hunnybear’s friend Jonathan. “How come it says ‘Lion’? He asked, puzzled. Where are you?” Very cool, except for the threshold-billing phone system.

Next: On to Montreal


[This message has been edited by QuietLion (edited 11-07-1999).]