Compliments to AC staff
 

Typically a lot of us have a lot to complain...... But in every basket there are good/great apples as well.......

Flew YYZ/SEA on AC541 yesterday and I have to say it was by far the best service I had ever encountered.

Boarding: the gate agent was swift and greeted every passenger by mr/mrs/ms name and concluded with "enjoy your flight"

On board: the FAs were cheerful and the SD was extremely polite and personal. Every single passenger regardless of J or Y was greeted by "Good evening mr/mrs/ms name" some got "welcome back" and when some customers responded she made mention that "we value your business".

She was also very attentive to every passengers' needs, by looking at their body language and responded proactively.

I wished I had bought & participated the "candy for the crew program", which I regret not crossing my mind. But I did invite her to the YYZ MiniDO in March and hopefully be able to buy her a drink there!

On my recent domestic/NA flights (no recent overseas, not since early December), admittedly all in J, I have found the crew to be extremely nice.

Looks like the new policy of having the SD working in front may actually be working.

In addition, wines have seriously improved over the last couple of years. Also, I actually enjoyed the beef with bearnaise. Unfortunately on my last leg, beef had been replaced by stupid chicken. Not sure if that was a one off or a lasting change?

Baked, poached, grilled? I'm not familar with stupid chicken.;)
--
13F

Doesn't matter. I have yet to meet a chicken that's not stupid. :D

I had the chicken on a transcon in C a few days ago and I must say the chicken was actually pretty good, still quite moist and with a nice flavour. ^ (probably the first time chicken on a plane didn´t taste like rubber)

I´d agree with your statement regarding the wines, the Australian Shiraz was quite drinkable, not fantastic, but much better than some of the plonk that is sometimes served.

Service on this flight was great, too. ^

Wouldn't it be great if outstanding service from AC was the rule instead of the exception?

Cheers,

It's just that I don't particularly like chicken. Only bird meat that I really like is duck breast. reasonably rare. :D

(And no, I don't expect to get that on a plane.)

I've actully found most inflight staff to be really good when I have flown.

It's the ground staff that I find has been generally meh to poor with the occasional good service.

I agree! Fa and pilots are doing a great job. It is ga,operations,maintenance,reward program and communications that fail.

NRT-YYZ, AC2 25 JAN 2011

CSD Carole did an amazing job in J. I have gone some flights barely seeing a CSD, but Carole was up and down the cabin throughout the flight, very pleasant, wishing to do anything to make pax comfortable, chatty but not intrusive, outstanding!

Sadly the CSD on the YYZ-YUL flight afterwards was pretty terrible. I asked if they had anything vegetarian for me, she asked if it was pre-booked, I replied yes but I had been put on a later flights because of a 90 minute delay out of NRT, she went off looked at the manifest, came back and said "no special meal for you". That was all, no apologies, no sorry that you were delayed, didn't offer me the nuts or anything.....European carriers even in Y they will try to find something for you. Though if anything it made Carole's job look even more amazing.

I've had the option of the Bearnaise beef 3 times in the past two weeks so it's still around. I had it last night HNL-YVR and it was just ok - but it was much better than the one I had last week - the meat was really "spongy." Not as good as the pot roast beef thing they had a while back though. I'm very tired of the lemon-ginger salmon, but the salads have been great lately. Not sure if it's just the routes I've been flying, but I think they've been up-sized for domestic dinners and they have some nice roasted veggies and real (I think) Parmesan cheese. Had a really good Thai curried chicken (probably stupid chicken) going to LHR last week too. And the cheese plate is still better on the return from there.

And I still like "the blend" (Rhone-style Californian they have that I keep forgetting to look at the name.)

The Rosemount is not bad either. I think I like it better than the "blend" actually, even though the big Australian style is not necessarily my favorite.

According to the FA on my last flight, the "blend" is a sirah-viogner blend. This was the northern Rhone tradition. Ironically, however, virtually no one blends viogner into their sirah anymore in the Rhone valley. BTW, for the French-speakers, sirah is feminine, "de la sirah." And yes, the name comes from the Persian shiraz. Which Australian marketing went on to reinvent for their "hermitage" of yesteryear.

Given that I was vocal in my criticism of domestic service in the pre-Calin years, I do feel I should acknowledge the very clear improvement, BTW.

Stupid doesn't matter.. is it tasty is what matters. :D

You can cook a chicken reasonably rare too.:D or a duck well done too.:)

No such a thing as rare chicken. What you get is raw chicken. This is not done. Stupid bird.

(Duck breast is red meat. At least if rare.)

:D