All airlines are in business to make money, not to keep customers satisfied. If they can get away with treating their customers like dirt and still make more money, they will.

Unlike in Europe, in Canada airline passengers have few legal or regulatory protections from things going really, really wrong.

When things go really, really wrong for economy class passengers, not only do they usually not have the same resources as business class or status passengers to deal with these issues out of pocket, but they also get to add insult to injury by being told that they're no better than cattle, excuse us while we go help our elite passengers.

AC probably has no greater incidence of these issues than most airlines, that's true. But the combination of no legal protection and the way AC treats its non-status passengers makes the experience exponentially worse.

I'm an economy class passenger with no status, and I travel infrequently (usually once a year for a vacation that I've saved up for, or on business a few times a year to places like Toronto or New York). My best experiences are typically with Porter, WestJet and Delta in North America and with airlines like KLM overseas. My worst are with AC. I avoid them like the plague, because at least the other airlines still treat me like a human being. AC doesn't.