I wanted to share with everyone my adventures travelling on AC yesterday. A simple PBI-YYZ-YQB itinerary that was supposed to take 6.5 hours actually turned into something close to 14.5 hours thanks to a cascading series of more or less related unfortunate events.

I was scheduled to fly the following itinerary:
AC921 PBI-YYZ 12:00-15:05
AC1796 YYZ-YQB 16:55-18:26

I showed up at the airport in PBI under sunny skies and checked in without incident. Our inbound landed late (what's new?) and we eventually departed 15 minutes late and were scheduled to land 39 minutes late. No big deal, my layover in YYZ was long enough and I was confident I would make my connection.

But then something happened to the plane that was supposed to operate my YYZ-YQB sector and that bird apparently went mechanical while I was flying in blissful ignorance on AC921. When I landed in YYZ and turned off airplane mode, I was flooded by a series of delay notices for my AC1796, with the latest departure time posted at 20:20, which would get me in YQB at 22:02. Oh well, it's winter, these things happen. Feeling sorry not to spend the evening with my better half and my daughter, I went up to the MLL to enjoy a few adult beverages.

Disappointed with the food selection (I am still so naive), I ended up going back down to have some proper food at Mill Street. Yummy, highly recommended. At 19:45, I made my way to gate D44 to board the 20-years old Rouge 319 that was supposed to take me home. As I was walking, I looked up where that plane came from and was actually suprised to realize it had just landed from LIR and was thus parked somewhere at an E gate. Sure enough, there wasn't any plane at my gate. At 20:20, which was still the posted departure time, GA announced that we were entitled to compensation and to come get a form at the podium. She had no idea what the comp would be, we would just have to request it online tomorrow. Ok. While she was busy handing out the form (and thus distracting passengers), the board updated the departure time to 21:20.

At that time GA came back on the microphone to announce that the delay was due to the fact that the plane was still parked at an international gate and that there were no tow tractors available to move the aircraft. The plane was eventually pulled to the gate and crew boarded at about 20:50. Boarding was complete at 21:20 and we just sat there for a while. Then, at 21:30, I received another delay notice, pushing back our departure time to 22:15. A maintenance guy boarded as apparently there was an issue with the lavs. At 22:00, we learned that lavs are fine and they just need to run some diagnostics before we leave. We eventually pushed back after a few minutes and taxied to the runway.

As we were holding short of the runway and I was settling in for a nap, I saw the back galley FA get up, pick up a first aid kit in a bin over the emergency exit and head to the front of the plane. All FAs immediately unbuckled and closed the curtain so it was obvious something was up. At 22:26, we are told that a crew member suffered an injury and that we needed to head back to the gate to meet with paramedics and offload him. After what must have been the slowest taxi ever, we were back at our initial gate, it was now 22:46.

Now of course we cannot just leave missing a FA so we just sat there for a while without information. Some people got up and left the plane. We eventually heard that the injured FA actually broke his thumb, or bruised it badly, while settling in his jumpseat before takeoff. At 23:00, we were told they found a reserve FA and that he was on his way and that he should be here any minute now. 15 minutes later, still no FA and people were getting restless, some of them starting to yell at the crew, demanding information, water and snacks. At that point I was starting to get worried about a potential cancellation and crew timing out so I started to look for alternative ways to get home. Apparently, the reserve FA had been reassigned somewhere else and we were now waiting for another FA that was coming from a TPA flight. So we needed to wait for her to deplane, clear customs and walk all the way to our gate.

If all of this wasn't stressful enough, there were multiple Amber alerts going off on passengers' phones at that time. You can imagine how this just made people even more stressed out and impatient. At about 00:00, I managed to speak with the captain and he assured me they would not time out. The captain also told me the TPA FA would be on board in 5 minutes.

The new FA boarded at 00:10. Amber Alerts still blaring on phones at random intervals. We finally pushed back at 00:20 and took off at 00:35. Full lights were left on for pretty much the duration of the flight to allow passengers to enjoy a complementary beverage and snack service - how thoughtful. We landed at about 2:00, over 7.5 hours later than the original scheduled time.

So this morning I eagerly went online to fill out the little compensation form, curious about what I would get. Anyone wants to venture a guess?

Amber alert was about an 11 years old girl missing who was eventually found dead killed by her father. Sad story and a well justified alert.

I am not questioning the value of Amber alerts at all. Being a father myself I am very sympathetic in fact. I was just just stating that this was contributing to a heightened stress and anxiety level in the cabin.

Not claiming you did. But context: apparently quite a few people in Ontario got upset about the alert waking them up, according to news reports.

I had a brief chat with the injured FA. He told me he considered not saying anything until we landed in YQB to avoid delaying the flight further but then thought it was smarter to deal with this now rather than face potential complications in the air. I have to agree that was the right call to make.

Just go to Taiwan then.

Not sure when AC knew, but I learned that the LIR plane would operate our flight when I landed from PBI. At that time, a departure time of 20:20 had already been posted.

And we have a winner. A very restrictive 15% discount was offered.

Now I am debating whether I should write in or not.