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Bad experience with Air Canada and concierge: seat not kept during connection

Bad experience with Air Canada and concierge: seat not kept during connection

Old Feb 20, 2018, 1:21 pm
  #1  
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Unhappy Bad experience with Air Canada and concierge: seat not kept during connection

I would like to share the very unpleasant experience I had with Air Canada this last Sunday. I had a reservation from Montreal to Delhi with a layover in Toronto of 1 hour and 1 minute with seats in business class, and I am a SE flyer with 1MM. In Montreal I checked ahead of time that the plane would be at the gate without delay for 19h00, and it was, having already landed in Montreal 2.5 hours before the time of my flight departure. So I though everything would be on time and I would make the connection (no security anymore to go through in Toronto with these connections). Everybody boarded the plane 15 minutes prior to departure, but between that time and the scheduled departure time we were informed that the pilots were not on the plane and they would be arriving soon. The same announcement was made at 19h00 then at 19h15. At 19h30 the pilots arrived and we were told that it would take them 20 minutes to perform their checks. At that time I sent a message to Concierge to ask them to assist me with my connection in Toronto as it would be tight and I did not want to miss the flight. We finally took off at 19h50 instead of 19h00, but when we arrived in Toronto (21h00) we waited an additional 10 minutes for the ground crew to assist us(!). I finally left the plane and met Concierge at the gate at 21h10, but I was told that my seat was not kept despite me asking that my seat be kept, and that there was still 15 minutes before normal departure time. The concierge assisted me to arrive by the gate and we were there more than 5 minutes ahead of time, but I was told the gate was closed and I could not board the flight.

Very often I board a plane and we are told to wait an additional 10-15 minutes for passengers to board because of their connections. Why then was the gate closed ahead of time for me when:
1) The delay was 100% due to AC, not due to weather or something else
2) AC knew at all time where I was, so it is not that they did not know I would arrive EXACTLY 5-10 minutes before departure time
3) I specifically ask Concierge to assist me and make sure I make the connection (if I miss the connection then I am automatically arriving the following day in Delhi as there are no other direct flight until 24 hours later)

What good is a Concierge service for SE frequent flyers if they do not help you in these cases when the delay is entirely ACs fault? In the end I had to cancel the flight completely as I could not miss one day in India out of only a 3 day trip. So I lost a complete day for this back and forth flight to Toronto, I needed to cancel all my meetings in India and my hotel reservation, and will now have to find time to rebook this flight later on in the year and make sure that I can have my meetings again at this later time.

ACs response was that they have to follow strict rules for airplanes and they could not hold my seat because of them. That is not a satisfying answer when I know of all the times I experienced delays because of delayed passengers and/or AC staff. In the end, to add insult to injury, this particular flight was even delayed and left Toronto at 22h00 instead of 21h25 (!), so this is even more frustrating that I was not allowed on board when by the gate between 21h15 and 21h20, when the delay was 100% ACs fault and Concierge was supposed to help.

Not too long ago I took a flight with Swiss airlines and we were to miss our connection in Zurich. I was not too stressed as it was not the last flight of the day to LHR. But at the gate, Swiss had a bus for us and brought us to the LHR gate in time and had a special customs agent meet us so that we would exit the border before boarding. All this and I am not a frequent flyer on Swiss, there was a border to cross, and I had an economy seat. That WAS service. AC would do well at seeing what others do.
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Old Feb 20, 2018, 1:39 pm
  #2  
 
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Welcome to Flyertalk!

Wow- sorry to hear of your troubles...given that the flight to DEL was delayed until 22:00, I am surprised they did not get you on the flight . One reason I can think of is that the flight was oversold and your seat was already given away..>Do you have the AC app that shows you the Standby and Upgrade list?

Having said the above, I would not have booked on a flight from YUL that allows only a 1hr 1min connection time at YYZ- especially not in the winter. I understand that may be a legal connection, but lots of crap happens in Winter. I would have booked the 18:00 YUL-YYZ (which arrived pretty much on time that day) to give yourself a bit of buffer.

Lastly, at that point where they denied me boarding, I would have insisted that they send me through Europe (FRA, LHR or perhaps IST) to arrive in DEL early the next morning from when you should have arrived...there are many viable options from YYZ...

Happy flying!
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Old Feb 20, 2018, 1:46 pm
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"aving said the above, I would not have booked on a flight from YUL that allows only a 1hr 1min connection time at YYZ- especially not in the winter."

Likewise. I have sympathy for the OP, but I would NEVER book a flight with an international connection with that small a window. I'd provide 3-4 hours at a minimum, and if there was any weather, I'd move the original flight up.

In fact, I had YYZ-YUL-BRU -- with a 3 hour connection. Got to YYZ, things are a mess, and I had them move up YYZ-YUL by a few hours.

Otherwise, you are playing with fire.
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Old Feb 20, 2018, 1:48 pm
  #4  
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Understood and that is why I checked that the plane was there and if it was not there I was ready to take the 18h00 flight. AC may have known pilots would not make the connection but I could not.

Also AC offered me the flight through LHR but that was also making me miss one day out of 3, so it was not a possibility.

I never book connections this tight, but for whatever reason that is the only connection I remembered being offered at the time of booking. If they were others then it was because the other ones were much much more expensive.
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Old Feb 20, 2018, 1:54 pm
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Originally Posted by ff123
Also AC offered me the flight through LHR but that was also making me miss one day out of 3, so it was not a possibility.
.
You were scheduled to arrive in DEL at 21:40 on the next day (+1 day).

Through Europe you could have arrived at 01:30 (+2 days) (FRA flight) ...meaning less than 4 hours later than your original arrival time. You would not have missed a whole day, but simply would have arrived 4 hours later.
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Old Feb 20, 2018, 1:55 pm
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Originally Posted by ff123
I never book connections this tight, but for whatever reason that is the only connection I remembered being offered at the time of booking. If they were others then it was because the other ones were much much more expensive.
Sometimes the connections an hour later or earlier are more expensive by $1000 or more. But same day change is free for YUL-YYZ.
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Old Feb 20, 2018, 1:56 pm
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The flight was likely to be overbooked and your seat was giving to someone else. Of course you are more entitled to your seat than the person who got upgraded, but following the UA incident it is not wise to unload someone already boarded.
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Old Feb 20, 2018, 3:06 pm
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Originally Posted by Plumber
You were scheduled to arrive in DEL at 21:40 on the next day (+1 day).

Through Europe you could have arrived at 01:30 (+2 days) (FRA flight) ...meaning less than 4 hours later than your original arrival time. You would not have missed a whole day, but simply would have arrived 4 hours later.
Yes that would have been nice but I was not offered that one. I was offered the direct AC the next day or the AC LHR/Jet Airways DEL arriving at 10h50 the next day vs the planned arrival. Which is not bad at all for last minute like this, it is just that it was too late for the meetings so I had to cancel. No sense spending money on a trip if you cannot do what you have to do.

AC has to offer better service through its concierge service for tight connections like this due to AC delays for its elite members, especially when you are actually making the connection.
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Old Feb 20, 2018, 3:26 pm
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Were you offered the fancy car service?

Might not have mattered if the walking got you there what seemed to be fast enough.
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Old Feb 20, 2018, 3:30 pm
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Shouldn't this thread be titled "Passenger irritated that AC didn't delay 297 others for his own convenience"?
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Old Feb 20, 2018, 3:40 pm
  #11  
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You arrived at T-5, which is 10 minutes after the boarding gate cutoff.

It sucks, but holding a plane isn't what I'd expect a concierge to do. I'd expect them to meet me, say "you've missed the flight, but we have you rebooked via XXX". If that was not offered, that would be my complaint.

While different people have various risk aversion to low connection times, you booked a legal connection, and as such, it's AC's responsibility to get you to your destination.
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Old Feb 20, 2018, 3:40 pm
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Originally Posted by RangerNS
Were you offered the fancy car service?

Might not have mattered if the walking got you there what seemed to be fast enough.
Yes that is how we arrived at the gate with 5-10 minutes prior to the normal departure time.
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Old Feb 20, 2018, 3:42 pm
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That is funny!! But no actually there would have been no delay as I got there 5-10 min before departure time.
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Old Feb 20, 2018, 3:47 pm
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It is hard to feel much sympathy here:

a) You left a very tight connection to an international flight. Even if you land on time here, assuming the outbound is on time the best case is you walk through the terminal and they're already boarding AC042. This is very risky, especially in the winter.

b) Even though you had a tight connection you didn't know what your best plan B was to make it to DEL in time for your meeting should you be delayed, and failed to insist on this plan B when the time came.

If you're SE MM shouldn't you understand these things? Even if your plane was in YUL you could be delayed by crew, ground handling, weather, mechanical issues ... or any number of other things. Surely this has happened to you many times before.

I flew to DEL a few weeks ago. I left Canada a day early to give myself an acclimatization day in DEL and provide some buffer before my meetings started in India in case of travel issues, left 2.5h to connect in YYZ should there be an issue flying in from YOW (and there was, my YOW-YYZ flight was delayed about 45 mins) and I knew what my plan B was should I miss my YYZ-DEL for any reason. Why you didn't do any of these things I don't understand...
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Old Feb 20, 2018, 3:47 pm
  #15  
 
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Originally Posted by ff123
That is funny!! But no actually there would have been no delay as I got there 5-10 min before departure time.
With all due respect, when you say 5-10 minutes, does that mean that you aren't really certain? Could it have been 0 - -5 minutes, or -5 - -10 minutes?
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