In case you hadn't figured it out, I took a flight on AC yesterday. I presume it's the first flight I've taken where the full effects of the elimination of excess staff* were evident.
No YVR Fastrack domestic line, but it was Saturday morning. Nevertheless, the line up was ~30 minutes. It stretched aways down the consourse. (And wasn't helped by the "silly season" of wide-eyed tourists who really slowed the line down.)
The usual inordinate wait for trans-border connecting luggage at YYZ, but INSPASS was working (sort of) so no problems with the equally inordinate lines for INS.
Lightning quick baggage delivery at MKE.
Lightning quick same-day standby check-in at MKE. But because of customs and immigration issues, I would have to check-in for stand-by on the YYZ-YVR flight as well.
SE line at YYZ domestic open. Open, but not manned. After standing in line for a few minutes I motioned to the single agent working the area to ask about whether someone would be coming to the SE counter. Apparently not. She was the only one working the priority section that Thursday afternoon.
I joined the regular priority line, now as #14 (#15, if you count the person she was currently assisting) since several people had joined that line while I was furtively waiting in the SE line.
The line grew and grew, at one time being over 20 people long, including at least 5 SEs. During my 34 minute wait in that line (on top of the 10 or so minute myself and another SE wasted in the SE line) pretty much everyone in the line was expressing their disgust in different ways. Several left for the non-status lines, to take their chances with the masses. One guy, apparently in a hurry, headed for T3, to see if there was anyone there (WS?) who could get him on his way. The rest of us just shook our heads.
After the 34 minute wait, another agent showed up to man the SE counter. (The original agent had phoned for assistance while I was still in the SE line the first time.) 'Course in the meantime, 3 more SE's had come to the SE line. The chose to ignore, perhaps wisely, the admonishments of myself and and the other SE behind be, and remained in the SE line. Nevertheless, they were good enough to let the two of us go to the front of the line. Total time to check in (at the "SE" counter): just over one hour. Had I not been doing the standby thing, I would most likely have gone to either a kiosk (which I'm not sure would have worked given the difficulty every agent along the way had in finding my rez) or to the regular lines. I don't imagine they could have been any worse.
After the long check-in (and dealing with the ultra-slo-mo and equally dense "security" screeners) I had but a few minutes in the lounge. I was at the boarding gate at 36 minutes prior to scheduled departure, but of course boarding still didn't start until less than 30 minutes prior.
Joining the pre-board crowd, I entered a scorching hot cabin. Seems all of my recent trips have started this way. Are they "saving money" by delaying the startup of APUs and Air Con?
Arriving at YVR, we, all of us, waited forever for bags to show up. It would appear that in the time we were waiting for the baggage carousel to start, a WestJet plane landed, deboarded, off loaded all the baggage, and had all their passengers on their way.
I don't think there are that many WS planes landing at 7:45pm on a Thursday night. I saw one coming up to a gate as I was just getting off the plane. After dropping into the lounge to use the toilet, make some phone calls, down an can of apple juice, and discover that the internet was "down, I proceeded to the baggage area just in time to start hearing WS announcements. While waiting for our luggage, the WS luggage arrived, was quickly claimed, and in what seemed like no time, the WS carousel was vacated.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we're still waiting. Eventually the bags start arriving, but as usual, there's no order to them in terms of priority tags. As well, they come in "chunks" -- a load of bags, then another wait. Another load of bags, then another wait, and so on. My bag was at the head of the third load, priority tag and all. It seemed every load had several priority tags randomly scattered throughout the load.
For my scheduled 7:15pm landing (7:47pm actual) I was at the rental car counter at about 8:40pm, which runs the baggage wait out to approaching 1 hour.