I had assumed that being delayed for 12 hours for a mechanical might merit something more than a food voucher that you cannot easily spend and 2-3 hours in a crappy hotel. Apparently the crew were very keen to get the passengers off the plane so that they would not run into the breaching of the maximum time you can be waiting on an aircraft..... The penalties would really have kicked in then.
If Air Canada wants to learn any lessons from this, they would be well advised to have staff wait, after the last planes of the night have left their gates, until those planes have actually taken off before leaving their posts. Returning to a completely deserted terminal where none of the pax knows where to go or what to do next is simply appalling customer service. Not only had nearly all the AC staff gone home, there were apparently no supervisors present, either.
A passenger on another flight from Toronto last night ran into a different sort of problem. It seems that when you have checked in at Toronto you then have to wait while your luggage is screened. Once your name comes up on the board, you are clear to go through security. This guy's name never came up. Two hours in, the staff were still saying "Oh, it will come up in a moment!"..... The result was that he missed his flight, which was connecting to an international flight to Germany where he was due to speak at a conference. Since he was only going to be in Germany for two days, this effectively constituted a trip in vain.
I have flown Air Canada a few times, with OK experiences, but I read a lot about Air Canada's terrible customer service. Almost every week it seems some disaster strikes.This is the first time that people known to me have experienced it for themselves. Is anyone from AC reading this?
Unfortunately this is par for the course for AC when there is IRROPs. 3-4 staff rebooking hundreds of people in line. 2 people in the baggage hall. Why they cannot have a bank of phones to connect to a AC call center is beyond me. And the TB departures is also complicated with the need to reclear Canada customs, someone has to walk you to the right door and let you thru, etc.
I would most definitely write in. You will likely get a discount code or AE points but more of benefit to all of us would be the fact that they would see these complaints and not assume everything is fine. These issues do not normally impact me because of concierge service, shorter phone wait times, etc. but I see them often on my travels which is mostly to US destinations.