In mid-May, my wife and I flew YVR-YYZ-MUC (returning in June) on reward tickets in executive class. Exec reward tickets to Europe are 85,000 points each, compared to 60,000 for economy.

All went well on our YVR-YYZ leg. I can't say the same thing for the YYZ-MUC portion.

We took off for YYZ a couple minutes before the scheduled 8pm departure time. After around a half hour in the air, the 767 banked sharply and I thought to myself that this was a strange flight path. A little while later the captain came on to announce that there was a mechanical issue (nothing serious he insisted) and that we were heading back to Toronto where the mechanics would take a quick look and we'd be off again. We arrived back in the gate and the mechanics came on to look at the issue. Sitting in the first row of Exec, we had the opportunity to speak to the captain who told us there was an electrical burning smell in the cockpit, possibly from the entertainment system.

After a while on the ground, the flight attendants announced that economy passengers would be served their dinner as they had gone into the ovens shortly after takeoff and must be served. Exec passengers would receive meals once airborne again.

The mechanics couldn't locate the source of the problem, so all passengers were off loaded so they could find another plane for us. By now, it was somewhere around 10pm. All of us Exec passengers went to the lounge, but there was not much left there in the way of food.

At midnight or so, we boarded our new plane, which must have been the worst old 767 in the fleet. The walls were scuffed and the seats worn. The flight crew was embarassed about it and the purser apologized to the passengers. Things were particularly bad for the exec class passengers. Instead of being a normally configured international J, there were 6 seats across on this 767. There were no leg rests, and not as much legroom as usual. There were no personal television screens, just the one main screen. There were also no personal DVD players to hand out in their place. In any event, my wife's audio didn't work so she couldn't even watch the mainscreen.

A while after takeoff, Exec class passengers were informed that our dinners had not been loaded onto the flight, and that they only had one meal loaded and it was breakfast. Since so many of us hadn't eaten in hours and were expecting food, they served the omelets around 1am. They were awful. The purser came around to each Exec class passenger apologizing for the inability to offer Exec class service and urged us to fill out a complaint form that he handed to each of us.

At the conclusion of the flight, and our arrival around four hours late into Munich, the purser announced to all passengers that this flight had "mercifully come to an end".

In all of the circumstances, I think that the crew did all they could to make the best of a bad situation that they had no control over.

We have since been offered compensation by Air Canada in the form of a choice of either 20,000 points each or a $300 travel voucher each. Since we earn points far faster than we can use them, we chose the travel vouchers. We think that the compensation offered to us was very fair (especially since 3 of the 4 legs in Exec were great), but I'm curious as to what others think.