That's a case where I'd be calling in as soon was we touched down to figure out what's going on.

I refuse to run across an airport unless I'm doing it at the direction of someone who is on the phone with the GA. Or the opposite. Too many times I've been told "run! run!" and the flight hasn't even started boarding yet, or "no need to run, you won't make it anyway", and I miss it by 30 seconds, or "no need to run, you'll have no issue making it", and I miss it by 30 seconds.

Yeah, I find the "run, run", "you're not going to make it", "hurry", etc. to be real lame. Perhaps it is just a disclaimer so that they don't get blamed for not advising to hurry or whatever. Usually I get this from agents whose first name is "Customer", middle name is "Service", and last name is "Agent" according to their lapel thingy. It's kind of weird with so many employees having the same name. I mean, how do people tell them apart? Sheesharoni.

:D:D:D

Brilliant. At that point, I'd rather wear a lapel thingy that says "Me. Just me"

Does this merit contacting the Concierge....as a S100K if I'm flying AC102, YVR-YYZ which arrives in YYZ at 21:50, and connecting to YOW. However, due to the minimum connecting time of 45 minutes, I am booked on the next flight to YOW at 00:30. If AC102 arrives on-time, I can get the 22:30 flight to YOW.

Is it appropriate for me to contact the Concierge on the day of travel, and ask them to put me on the 22:30 flight to YOW?

The concierge can put you on standby for the earlier flight at no charge. It's a Rapidair flight (provided you don't check any bags)

The problem with that thinking is that Intl J without SE do not have a phone number. Concierge may be available in the airport.

Sure, but adam.smith is SE :p

Air Canada's concierges are great - along with the direct phone numbers, they're the main reason I cherish my SE status.

That said, they're not mind readers, nor can they continually scan the entire system for these misconnection scenarios.

I had the exact scenario as above early in 2014 except I was starting in Medellin. Once I got to the airport in MDE and was told of the BOG-YYZ delay by the Avianca agent, I was proactive. I called the Calgary concierge desk (when you could call them directly) and told them about the delay. The concierge told me to let him look into what he could do to get me home same day and that he would have more info for me once I landed in BOG. 15 minutes after landing in BOG, he gave me a call on my cell to let me know that no other alternative schedule would get me into Calgary earlier and that an overnight in YYZ was the best option. He contacted the concierge in YYZ to make arrangements and prior to boarding in BOG, I got a call from a concierge in Toronto letting me know to go straight to the ALT Hotel upon landing and that she would have my following morning's boarding card printed and waiting for me at the front desk. And sure enough, it was there waiting for me.

It may sound spoiled but when you travel so much, these are the type of things that keep you loyal.

If you give a concierge time, they will usually go the extra mile for you. I just can't say enough about AC's concierges.

I absolutely do not mean any disrespect to the concierges, but this is a TECHNICAL limitation.

When a delay is posted, the system should check for passengers who are going to miss connections. The system should automatically rebook whomever it can. If it cannot rebook someone, it should alert the GA at the arrival gate. If the passenger is VIP, SE, or on an international business class itinerary, it should alert the concierge call center, who can verify everything looks good, maybe make better arrangements or get you on standby on earlier full flights or whatever.

I do not expect the concierges to sit there looking at every passenger on every flight, but I expect the system to do it.

Also, whenever I "unexpectedly" show up at SFO (one day my status disappeared from my booking, another day I was flying SFO-LAX-YYZ and wanted an AC BP for the second segment because it was a tight connection and I wanted Pre✓, as the UA printed BP didn't have it), I've been greeted by something like "Mr. Cow, you weren't on my list this morning!"

Even in ZRH, while waiting to checking in, there was a concierge standing around, and I asked if Marina was working that day. She asked for my name, and already knew my final destination was SFO without having to look at her sheet.

So they do monitor SEs at smaller stations.

But this is just something that could be mostly automated. And I've seen improvements in this area. It was only a year ago where I'd call, and they'd pick up with "Vancouver concierge, can I have your Super Elite number please?", and now it's "Thank you for calling Mr. Cow, is this about AC 739 to SFO?"

In the days where we had direct phone numbers, I might well have done so. But when time is of the essence, I'm not going to mess around trying to phone the call centre.

Yours is a different situation though. You knew well in advance that you were going to miss your connection. In my case, it was in the grey area. BOG-YYZ was delayed just over an hour. I've been on that fight before where a similar delay resulted in them holding the YYZ-YYC flight, or where the YYZ-YYC flight was also delayed and we made it. When it's in that grey zone, I find AC usually won't do anything until the plane takes off.

I would agree that in some cases the onus is on the traveller to make a request of the concierges, but I don't think that's the case here. In addition to the above paragraph, as I said in my earlier post up-thread, there were at least 5-6 other SEs on the flight, all making the same connection - those are just the people I knew and who were flying in J. AC's systems should flag that. Maybe, as cow said, it's more of a technical problem, but if AC's concierge program were actually good, that's something it would do, either through software or someone keeping an eye on it manually.

I don't know if I'd depend on the call centre while running through a terminal, but after touchdown, while taxiing, that's enough time for them to figure things out.

With the direct lines, I had MANY situations where there was simply no answer. In one of those cases, it was because two concierges were out in the terminal setting up a tag team of golf carts to get me to my connection. In another case, it was because the LAX concierges just refused to answer the phone or emails all day.

Well let me rephrase. I think this SHOULD be done "automatically" by the system.

HOWEVER, given that it doesn't work that way, I think SOMEONE should be looking at an arriving international flight that's been delayed by an hour, see 8 people (5 of whom are SE) in J who may miss the YYC connection, and figure something out.

There is absolutely no reason that in an airport like YYZ, you can't have a "large" golf cart waiting at the top of the jet bridge to get everyone important (i.e. SE and J making the connection) to customs, another to get you to domestic security, and another to get you to your gate.

Maybe. I generally want those first couple of minutes of cell phone service to check e-mails, voicemails, etc to see if anything urgent has come up while I've been on the plane, which frequently it has. And given the inherent delay in the process of traveller to call centre to local concierge, I think there's a good chance it wouldn't work. But who knows.

Yes, the system should do it, but we all know how AC's systems work :)

Don't the concierges get a daily printout of the SEs passing through their system, which might give them a chance to flag this earlier in the day? Although I suppose at YYZ the list must be very long...

I like your point about the golf cart. Or at least just tell us we've missed the flight, here are your BPs for tomorrow and here's your hotel stuff so we don't do the stupid run. They also could have checked the hotels. I understand that SEs are supposed to be put up at the Sheraton or the Alt in YYZ, but I was originally stuck in one of the crummy off-airport hotels.

It's not even the printout. "Gee, we have an inbound international flight delayed by an hour" should be enough to get someone to manually look it over and figure out who needs "special treatment". I don't need someone sitting there checking on me every 5 minutes, but maybe take a look at flights delayed over a certain threshold and see if there are any SEs on it.

Agreed. One way or another, they should be catching stuff like that. I'd rather concierges spent their time on that than the limo thing.

BTW if you are trying to contact the Concierge (and not reservations etc) - you must select '1' for traveling today. Any other selection you will be transferred to the reservations line.