Flight/Origin-Destination: Toronto to London Heathrow
Date: 01-Mar-2013
Cabin: Y
Status: none

Pre departure:

Showed up at YYZ T1 about 3 hours ahead of departure. Air Canada's signage appears confusing whether people are to use kiosks to check-in, or to join the line.

Only 2-3 desks are staffed for international section. Cranky agents on the economy class check-in. Agents appear to be working a little too hard on matching passports to faces. Wouldn't let me ask anything until she was done.
Agents spent too much time chit-chatting with passengers on non-flight related things when there are people in line waiting. Pax were obviously getting frustrated with the love-chats of agents.
Why can't they focus on moving the line quickly. Also noticed check-in clerks take too much time to open their counters, and very quick to go on their breaks......very slow and inefficient. Seems the attitude is that of: spend too much time on each, so you do less people per hour, or something like that. Nobody in the line was impressed by the slowness of these agents.



Onboard - Y cabin:

Were the crew professional & well groomed? Just like other airlines.
If there was a delay, were you provided with timely updates?
Info given by captain regarding de-icing and atlantic conditions.

Was the IFE activated on the ground? Yes, but no headphones provided until later on. There is confusion with pax whether headphones have to be purchased or will be complimentary, because the magazine indicates prices.

Approximately how long after take off did it take for the first meal service/Onboard cafe to begin? Didn't notice....

How was the quality of the meal/Onboard cafe?
I had ordered special meal when I made the booking. But it was not offered, I wasn't even on the meal list. Extremely crappy booking system to blame?
Pasta meal is not that great. Agents frequently forgot to offer the bread to several people.


Did the cabin crew offer water regularly throughout the flight?
Only water, unlike beverages offered by other airlines.


Post departure:

If you have checked baggage, did it arrive within reasonable period of time? Yeah it made it to connecting flight/airport.

Overall experience/any other comments:

AC needs a big improvement on improving efficiency amongst its staff.
There is no need to make every announcement in both languages, just stick with English, its enough.

And why do you offer pax to choose special meals on the website if you're not going to fulfil that request.

The special meal was provided on the RETURN flight back to Canada (AC 847). I have no idea why special meal could not be provided on the outbound flight from Toronto to LHR.

Even as a leisure traveler, I missed not flying Lufthansa. Next time I'll pay the 100 bucks more to fly them.

On the return flight, I was flying LH from LIS to MUC, then on AC from MUC to YYZ. I don't understand why AC does not allow LH to issue boarding pass for the AC flight.
When I showed up in MUC at the AC counter to "check-in", I was told to wait for 15-20 mins while the agent held my passport so she could verify something. Only after that they issued the boarding pass. No explanation given whatsoever as to why I had to wait while everyone else got their boarding pass right away. At least tell me the reasoning of the delay in issuing boarding pass, rather than telling me to go sit down while you held my passport. This has never happened with OS, LH, S4, etc so why does it happen on AC flights?