robsaw

And how - pray tell - would anyone without insider knowledge have any idea that a "duty officer" exists and what they may be able to do when YYZ has apparently zero public direction with respect to these people? And what precisely CAN they do in a situation like this other than point someone maybe back to AC?

PointWeasel

Meltdown was dramatic, agreed.

I would call have called it a not uncommon YYZ travel day.

Many balls were dropped as usual.

LondonElite

I think more hyperbole is needed.

CZAMFlyer

Remember: I never suggested that the passengers in question were supposed to know duty officers existed during the Night of the Great Meltdown. I offered a suggestion moving forward, for future events. I believe I made that quite clear.
Are we blaming the airport authority now? In place of, or in addition to the airline? At which point do passengers surrender all personal responsibility to seek solutions to their problems?
They will help the OP's friend with such questions as where to find their bags, how/if to re-clear customs and advise them of the need to follow the painted purple line to Connections. These were all questions contained within the original post. Terminal duty officers may not be able to fix all of the problems, but they can summon those who can.

I wasn't present in YYZ that evening - mind you, nor was the OP - but I have some troubles believing there was nobody on staff within the terminal. Large airports are not abandoned, especially while post-security areas are full of the general public.

BJfly

As a US based traveller who has flown on Air Canada more than my share, I can say the following:

1) For the most part, Air Canada seems to treat the US flights as less important than their intra-Canadian flights. Much more likely to see LGA-YYZ cancelled than anything domestically within Canada. I have no idea the reason for this, but my observation points support it.

2) When things go wrong, regardless of which airport, waiting in line for help can take an exceeding long time, and the customer service centers in the airport are decidedly NOT that. The 800 number (although sometimes very long hold times) tends to be much better. The customer service counters seem to take the attitude that they are not happy until your are not happy. Sometimes the ticket counters are better - certainly they are more polite although not always more helpful.

3) When things seem to be going wrong, do NOT trust your travel agent to say "your protected on the next flight". Air Canada just laughs. You need to have a fully ticketed reservation to have a chance.

4) Don't bother waiting in a line to get a hotel. Unless they insist that the delays were weather caused (and they are pretty liberal with that) most of the time when they are issuing vouchers, they will also reimburse for a reasonable hotel cost if you secure one yourself and send them the receipt and a nice email. No promise on this, but I am 3 for 4 on that. However, the reimbursement has always been in the form of vouchers towards future travel - not quite the same as cash on hand.

BJFly

CZAMFlyer

Perhaps airports like LGA suffer similar weather woes at the same time as does YYZ? Or it has its own congestion issues? I'm not sure how many observation points you hold, but AC's business plan involves being very attractive to US-based travellers* connecting in YYZ and flying overseas. AC certainly sees their US flights as important. If you observe domestic flights being treated with 'priority', consider those destinations may not be suffering weather/traffic delays. When beset by delays, airlines tend to cancel flights on routes on which there are many daily turns - focusing on the international and domestic trunk routes instead. If you have the choice between canceling 3 of 10 daily LGA flights vs the 777 that goes to YVR and on to Australia, it becomes a more rational decision.

*granted: NYC area flyers are probably less likely to connect in YYZ than say, somebody from CLE or RDU when headed overseas due to having plenty of their own local nonstop options.

Stranger

I suspect the issue is not transborder vs. domestic but mainline vs. regionals and long haul vs. short haul. With lots of rotation per day, issues tend to accumulate and flights later in the day end up suffering.

flybit

wow, seems they are the ones who have stalled the bill in the senate protecting us all from Air Canada.

knit-in

It's true. $10 isn't enough for a decent airport priced meal.

So the $10 meal voucher probably cost the airline $2.50-3?

KenHamer

Like I said... just another Thursday.

Antonio8069

Another reason AC is ill equpped to deal with this kind of meltdown is that this part of Terminal 1 "closes" at or aroung 21:30. In the transborder zone, you have pre-cleared US immigration. So IROPS after shutdown require passengers to re-enter Canada, deal with CBSA, etc. My advice to the OP is to wait a few days and file a complaint directly with AC. They will (at least) provide a credit for future travel (in your complaint, be sure to say how AC could have handled it better = more of a credit!).
While I agree that CATSA is useless, that is all we have (for now). You can escalate your AC complaint to CATSA if you are not satisfied with the airline's response? They will contact AC on your behalf and the offer can improve.

emcampbe

Sorry to hear about your story. Having used to take occasionally take CVG flight personally, as well as having family take it, I am actually quite surprised to hear that CVG had priority above any other flight, ever. Stopped taking it because of the amount of delays/cancels on it - quite often, leaving on the ~5:00pm to ORD on UA with a long connection will get you to CVG faster.

I'm assuming the name on the board deal is a connection issue - when you are going through pre-clearance and have your bags checked through. I rarely connect through YYZ, but originate several times a year, and even when they changed the system to check bags at check in as opposed to having to carry through CBP yourself, have never had to wait for anything.

Betting this has more to do with both slots at LGA, as well as frequency of AC flights.

LGA flights go hourly most of the day. If there is flow restrictions into LGA, rather than send all the flights, they can likely cancel a couple and re-acomodate pax over two or three of the next flights. If the delay, is say, 2 hours anyway, you're likely not going to be waiting much longer. This probably helps AC naturally reduce their flow, which may be required in some situations, while still getting all pax to the destination in roughly the same amount of time - if there is another (dealyed) flight getting caanceled, they can use that slot to send the later flight with less of a delay. Won't work out for everyone all the time, of course, but probably works out for many. If frequency is less (i.e., EWR), I suspect you're less likely to see cancels, but see higher instances of longer delays.

This is the issue for higher profile destinations. For less traffic destinations, like CVG or CLE, served only by RJs, you'll see both heavy delays and cancels depending on the situation - they're just not high priority enough, where if there is flow control leaving YYZ, these flights are among the fist to get hit.

RangerNS

Airlines can negotiate good rates for hotel rooms. The actual cost of servicing a hotel room is what? Washing a few sheets, towels, some soap and labor? Even the fanciest hotel in the universe, operational costs aren't $50 a night. (which might not cover the mortgage, but putting $1/night to debt is better than putting $0/night to debt.)

Food, however, actually costs the restaurants money. A $10 meal is a $8 meal. AC isn't getting a discount.

But the word is compensation. No, you can't get a meal for $10. But can you get a meal for < $10 more than you would outside the airport? Presumably you have to eat one way or the other.

FlyerTalker70

Have another data point to add to this conversation:

Was flying out EWR -> YUL over the weekend on AC. Flight was delayed for an hour then went MX. That was a big inconvenience to me as my journey began at 1:45 AM flying BQN -> EWR. Anyway, customer service line near gate was long and staffed with 2 agents. Instead of dealing with that hassle I went over to the MLL (accessible thanks to UA Gold) and the dragon rebooked me on next available flight (5 hours out) with no argument or hassle which is good. I then had to walk back to the gate agent to get my checked bag retagged for the new flight (no idea why that couldn't be handled lounge side).

However, I did have to request and remind the lounge agent for a meal voucher and was only offered up $10 USD for the inconvenience. I'm sorry but $10 USD can get you a small sandwich or maybe a coffee at EWR. If this were UA I probably would've gotten $40-$60 USD for the hassle.

My parents were flying YZR -> MAD (via YYZ) and their first flight (YZR -> YYZ) was going to be delayed to cause an IRROP. Fortunately the agent at YZR spotted this, called them up and had them take off from YXU (since that's a similar distance to where they live).

I think the biggest criticism we can make about AC ground support is that the quality varies greatly between airports, terminals and even time of day and frequent flyer status. AC should strive to deliver great quality service for their customers if they want to actually be an international airline (i.e. fly AC from USA to Europe via YYZ). There's a reason why people don't mind flying with NH or SQ or when travelling to Asia even if it involves a connection in NRT or SIN: the airline is going to treat them well.

Safe Travels,

James

knit-in

I didn't follow what you meant by the last paragraph, but to your previous point-- the cost of the food itself to a restaurant is not 80% of the the retail price. The real estate constitutes the largest expense in the restaurant business, pretty much like a hotel. Margins in the food industry are rather high, so a $10 meal does not cost the restaurant $8. A footlong Subway, for example, costs approximately $2 of ingredients to make.