Airlines Tag Team in Ruining Travel Experience

October 1, 2017

in Delay/Cancellation Stories

This was my first international flight. I was going from Seattle to Tokyo on Air Canada back in December of 2015. I had heard about Air Canada and how they are typically late all the time and how they lose luggage, but my travel partner and I decided to fly with them anyway.

The first leg of the trip isn’t even the half of the story. We arrived at SeaTac airport early with I believe two hours to spare due to us leaving in December. It was actually my idea to leave early so we could clear security with enough time to eat and drink while we headed to the terminal so we wouldn’t have to run. Well lo and behold when we arrived there were actually no lines at the check in desk. So my friend and I approached the desk, get checked in, and decided to go have some breakfast. We arrived at the airport around 7:30-8:00 am and our flight was leaving at 10:00, so around 9:30 we decided to head to the gate.

Prior to this trip, I was excited and acting like the typical first time traveler. I downloaded the Air Canada app and added our tickets so that I could watch them in case unexpected changes were made, which there were. We were supposed to fly out of Seattle at 9:00, but the airline jumbled everything up and instead had us fly from Calgary to Vancouver to connect for our Japan flight at 8:30 am when we were due to leave Seattle at 9:00 am. So after a very long and irritating call to Air Canada we got our flights fixed and were able to fly from Seattle to Vancouver to Tokyo.

Anyway, back to the main story. We get to gate with 15 minutes to spare before my Air Canada app tells me that our flight was delayed until 10:30. I told my friend; we weren’t upset because our connecting flight wasn’t until 2:30. Well when 10:30 rolled around we got another notification that the flight was delayed until 11:30, and then 12:30. By now we were a bit hysterical and went to the agents, who by the way were United Airlines team members. We asked them if the plane would be coming soon and they said they didn’t know, but they had the go ahead from Air Canada to start rebooking on other airlines. So they gave us a voucher to head down to the Delta gate which was still boarding and had about 10 minutes left before departure.

So my friend and I rushed down to the Delta gate which was only a five minute walk away, and gave them our vouchers. However, we all know how evil Delta is, and they told us that our vouchers were invalid and we had to go back and get the right ones, and that they would be closing the doors in five minutes. So we rushed back, about halfway in-between the Delta and the Air Canada gate.

We saw another guy running down to the Delta gate. We stopped him and tried to warn him about what Delta told us; he decided to continue down and try his luck. Unfortunately, he too, was turned away, so we had to go back, wait at the Air Canada counter, and see what news they had to give us about the delayed flight we were waiting for. Eventually they found out that the plane had returned to the gate three times due to mechanical issues. Around 2:30 in the afternoon we finally arrived at Vancouver, but our big international flight had left, so they put us up in a hotel for the night and gave us an overnight bag. That was due to all this kerfuffle about switching planes and what not.

When we landed in Vancouver they told us that our luggage had found its way to China, and that when we landed in Narita the luggage would be there. Well it wasn’t, but lucky for my friend and me we had heard stories about Air Canada, and so we squeezed everything we would need in our carry-on bags and left our coats and extra shoes in the large checked bags. So if you ever fly Air Canada, take it from me, make sure you pack everything in your carry on so your clothes and underwear don’t take a side trip to China.

{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

Abby October 26, 2017 at 2:20 pm

What do you mean "we all know how evil Delta is"?

Your flight hardly sounds like a flight from hell, stuff gets delayed, sounds like they took care of you.

Reply

Dex November 1, 2017 at 5:40 pm

It sounds like this was this person first international flight, so it might have been a surprise to them when all these things started to happen. To them, it might have been a flight from hell, and apparently the admin of this site think so as well. Also, I have had some pretty bad flights with delta, so I can understand why they would say delta was evil.

Reply

Leave a Comment
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *




Previous post:

Next post: