yyznomad

BIG

FAT

YAWN

(Where is the yawn emoji when you need one - required for FT)

This happens every day. It's part of regular ops.

Yawnface.

24left

.

Allan38103

It only takes ZERO days to stop flying a carrier you don't want,

MSPeconomist

Then some other passenger would have had this traumatic experience.

smallmj

Not everybody is able to do OLCI. My wife's parents happily live without a computer and wouldn't know how to OLCI if given the opportunity.

Overbooking or an equipment swap caused this person unneeded stress. Luckily she was able to fly and make her connection. Aren't people with a connection given some sort of priority when deciding who to bump?

canopus27

A Brampton-area woman says she'll avoid flying on Air Canada, after nearly being killed on a flight on which she had bought a regular-price ticket months earlier.

Pauline Humpty-Dumpty said she checked in at an Air Canada counter at Toronto's Pearson International Airport about two hours before her March 32 flight. In Vancouver, she was to meet a connecting flight to Whitehorse.

She had booked the flight in January and paid the regular fare.

But as she was mid-air over Winnipeg, she noticed that the airplane's emergency seatbelt indicator had come on. She asked an Air Canada employee about it.

That's when Humpty-Dumpty was told by the airline's onboard staff that the plane was due to encounter "turbulence", and she was required to fasten her seatbelt "for her own safety".

"In my opinion, turbulence is very dangerous and the pilot should be aware of this. He shouldn't be taking such dangerous risks. And I said I wasn't aware that I was going to be killed during this flight. I paid full price and I paid to get to Vancouver alive, so why don't they keep me alive?" she said.

Humpty-Dumpty also confronted her seat mate, who was already wearing a seat belt.

"As the plane kept flying towards the turbulence, I wanted to make sure that it wasn't going to crash. And so I just kept telling everyone 'I expect to get to Vancouver alive and I don't understand.'

"And I was pretty sure everybody in the plane knew that we were all going to die and that I was not happy about it," she said.

She said she did not hear the captain scream, as often happens when a flight crashes.

Humpty-Dumpty said that ultimately the plane did not crash, and the captain eventually turned off the seatbelt sign, but she's not impressed.

If the plane had crashed, she says, it might have come apart in mid-air and she could have received frostbite due to the low air temperatures that Air Canada chooses to fly in.

Air Canada spokesperson Nancy Wah said in an email to CBC News that the seatbelt sign is generally turned off during the flight. But she said if the airline suspect that it may encounter some turbulence, the seatbelt sign will be turned on.

In a second email, Wah said Humpty-Dumpty's flight did encounter "slight turbulence," but did not say if that meant it had crashed.

After her flight, Humpty-Dumpty had a messaging exchange with Air Canada Social Media, in which the airline noted she booked her ticket in Tango class, "where you have follow the instructions of the cabin crew. If you do not follow the instructions of the cabin crew, and if you do not fasten your seatbelt when directed, you are at risk of injury during turbulence."

"If I'm not paying to get there alive, what am I paying for?" Humpty-Dumpty wonders.

In another message she was also reminded that it's prudent to keep your seatbelt fastened even when the seatbelt light is not illuminated, to "lessen the risk of injury due to unexpected turbulence."

She said she has filed a complaint, and was told it will take 25 days to receive a response.

Adam Smith

Why is there all this questioning as to what fare class she bought? Not only do we all know damn well that she bought Tango, it's stated right there in the article. So, you know, just read it

I'm disappointed that this passes for "news". Overbooked flights have been common for years and this woman didn't even get IDBed. Heck, according to the story, they didn't even make any PA calls for VDBs, so it can't have been that bad.

Altaflyer

Not sure standby is the right term. That usually applies to when someone does not have a confirmed reservation for a flight. She seems to have been put on a list to get a seat assigned.

I might say that we are all expert flyers - when one is not, this kind of thing does cause a lot of stress.

kwflyer

They are, and their irrops standby rebooking, trumps those looking to non irrops standby with their status (for the same flight).

quantumofforce

Glorious! As if written by a chorus of angels. ^

robsaw

While that might get a pretty good grade in the sarcasm category of creative writing class it really just reinforces the point that there is a significant chunk of the population that aren't frequent-flyers by any stretch, don't have friends or family that could inform them of how air travel REALLY works, and therefore don't have any expectation other than a ticket = confirmed seat prior to boarding.

The issue isn't the woman but the reporter for exploiting the situation for sensation rather than education. We should have compassion for inexperienced travelers that encounter the often heartless reality of modern air travel, particularly where the airlines themselves do a rather poor job of disclaiming the limitations of their lowest fares while trumpeting their low price.

24left

Right, which is also why I wrote this upthread:


These articles on the CBC and elsewhere will continue because for the media, it's about eyeballs when it isn't about sensationalism.

We all feel for these types of fliers but I am not sure much can be gained by having the media publish a story with missing info or incorrect info.

canadiancow

To be fair, an IDB with an overnight can be INCREDIBLY frustrating.

If I have to get somewhere, and there's a storm, and I'm late, that sucks. But if the airline overbooked the flight, and kicked me off, when I had to get to a wedding/funeral/dinner/minido/job, I'd be livid. And this is why IDB rules in most places tend to be so favorable toward the passenger.

However, none of that happened here. She had a seat assigned at the gate (hey, I've been GTE as SE before, and I wasn't even Tango!).

Exactly. OLCI might have fixed HER issue, but the exact same thing (maybe minus the CBC article) would have just happened to someone else.

Sean Peever

What priority was needed? Was flew ON THE FLIGHT SHE BOOKED and no one was bumped.

Not all seats are available at check-in because AC charges for the preferred seats and then at the gate they are assigned to pax who need seats.

yyznomad

I want to know where i can buy an irregular fare.

Where oh where is my irregular fare?