I tried to log on three times tonight and each time the system claimed my PIN was wrong. It wasn't. So I went to the PIN reminder page and got the message That's why.

Aeroplan eventually put up a banner on the main page when they were almost done whatever it was they were doing. They seem to frequently disable logins while maintaining the site or for other unknown reasons but give you a stupid username/PIN error instead of a something like "logins are disabled while we perform website maintenance" message. They should put in some better error checking for their login function for things like maintenance, too busy, or whatever.

Same problem all day yesterday. When I tried calling the CSR that failed too due to the same requirment to enter AP #. hey should do a betetr job of posting a banner that the site is undergoing an update.

Flight 223 (YYC-YVR) was cancelled yesterday, due to a "Computer problem". I enquired to an AC staffer walking in the terminal and she told me their computers had been up and down all day. Sounds like the issue was more widespread than just the web site...

Same problem in YYZ yesterday around 5 PM... Some of the computers at the gates were working and others were not. Quite a delay in boarding procedures for my flight from YYZ to YVR.

Air Canada News:
Employees pull out all the stops and do a �great job� dealing with the operation in difficult circumstances. Yesterday afternoon, the company experienced a computer problem that affected many areas of the operation. The source of the difficulty was traced back to a Bell router that carries messages between computers. For some reason the messages were caught in a loop rather than being delivered. The impact of this problem meant we were unable to create flight plans, many stations lost their Operations computer functions and check-in across the system was slowed down, and in some cases stopped. This created tremendous pressure on all branches. �Despite facing these huge challenges, everyone pulled together and focused on what was important � keeping the operation running smoothly,� said Rob Reid, Senior Vice President, Operations. �We are extremely proud of all our employees. The airports were well staffed, announcements were made in a timely manner and our customers were well taken care of. Thank you for all your efforts.� added Steve Smith, Senior Vice President, Customer Experience.

I agree with him about the timely announcements, they did a good job of keeping people informed of what they had to do, in Calgary at least. But "well staffed"? When 223 was cancelled, I re-booked myself on a WestJet flight and on my walk down to the D gates, I walked past a HUGE line-up of people waiting to check-in for US-bound flights. I overheard someone at the back of the line saying they were told it was a 2 hour wait to check in, and there were aonly 3 or 4 agents at the counter. Not exactly what I'd call well-staffed in light of the long line-up.

However, I was pretty impressed with my first experience using the Concierge. She went looking for me in the lounge to tell me she had protected me on the next Zip flight, and when I told her I'd already re-booked on WestJet, she offered to process the refund on my ticket. She even called me back tonight to confirm that the refund had been processed and would I like a confirmation faxed to me? One can sure get used to this SuperElite stuff pretty quick!

It looks like the site is down again for "routine maintenance" for a couple of hours. One would think they would pick a better time for this "routine maintenance" than 11pm EST on a Wednesday. Kind of like closing Starbucks from 7-9am...

Another rebranding maybe?