SuperMesh

I'm still a newbie here, so please forgive my naivete.

So, yesterday, I had used a SSWU on my trip from BOS-YYZ-YYC. Both legs had a confirmed upgrade at the time of re-booking (yep.. had to reschedule because of snowmageddon).

BOS-YYZ (in J) was 1.5 hours late, which caused me to miss my initial YYZ-YYC connection. That said, the flight that was re-booked didn't have any room in J.

I kindly accepted the Y seat, but was surprised to see they offered me a free meal when the food cart came by. At that moment, I thought about what other FTers would do.

What would you do?
Kindly accept the circumstances like I did?
Complain until you got what you wanted?

Let's hear it!

tomh009

If there are no empty J seats, there is little you can do. The crew can't create another seat. Either graciously accept the meal (as you did) -- or wait for a flight with room in J.

As Vaclav said in another thread, que sera sera.

SensFan

C'est la vie. This isn't the UA board, we don't get compensation for when an FA looks at us funny.

SYM

This has happened to me often at this time of year. The issue will disappear in less than four weeks. Isn't one good thing about e-certs (in theory) that you will only be charged for the upgrades you fly?

jlisi984

Yes, would have been a big deal earlier in the year, however I assume that you had extra expiring certs that you used here, right? Earlier in the year, I would have contacted AC and asked for the certificate back, especially had it been YVR-YYC-FRA or so
something similar and I had lost the upgrade on the longer leg. My 2 cents.

SuperMesh

Everyone's thoughts are pretty much what I thought at the time. I didn't want to raise a big ruckus, especially since I knew there's nothing the ticket agents could do, and with the storm coming, I didn't want to make them any more stressed out than they needed to be. Didn't feel like pulling the DYKWIA card =)

I just didn't know if it would have been more standard to get something out of it. I was happy with my roast beef sandwich actually! It could have been worse though, the guy beside me and two others behind me had broken IFE's.

I guess I'm still coming out of this on top =D

tomh009

On that theme ... with the new program, it will actually be very easy for AC to issue eUpgrade credits as compensation. Will we see AC giving out some credits rather than AP miles in some cases? It will be interesting to see. Although I will not exactly be waiting with bated breath.

Jasper2009

So in the future AC will send us a response like this:

We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused by(....), unfortunately our FA´s behaviour, the AVOD system, broken aircraft is an event beyond our control, so no compensation is due. As a goodwill gesture we´re proud to offer you a choice of one of the following:

5% off cert* or
500 Aeroplan miles or
1 E-Upgrade credit

We appreciate your loyalty and look forward to welcoming you back in the distant future.

Sincerely,

Air Canada customer service


* discount is only valid for booking classes B and Y on flights within North America.

will5404

Sounds nice in theory, reality its the same situation. Your flying YWG-YVR-SYD and YWG-YVR clears hypothetically, but YVR-SYD is waitlisted. Previously you would of given up your cert at YWG if you wanted to gamble that YVR-SYD clears. Now you could get some eUpgrade credits back if one clears but not the other, but 15.5 hours of your journey is YVR-SYD, whereas 3 hours gets you to YVR. YWG-YVR is only 20% of your flying time, but you only get 65% of your credits back. (17 taken, -6 for YWG-YVR, 11 given back).

Which will likely leave you just short of being able to upgrade another long haul. It's better than nothing, but likely people will still choose to reject the short upgrade (IE the same thing that happened with paper certs).