AIR CANADA

[mikkie4]

Air canada to relaunch daily non stop seasonal flights between st johns and heathrow.dpt st johns 22.05 arrive heathrow 06.35. Dpt heathrow 13.00 arrive st johns 15.10. Will using 120 seat airbus a319 executive class and economy seats

[Irie Man]

319's? I never knew they had that range! Not that it's all that far, but I'd have thought maybe they'd put a 321 on that route!

[irishlad06]

The two 319's used is the LR version the A321 wouldn't have the range to make it fully loaded and would require an extra fuel tank whereas the A319LR has the extra fuel tank.

[roverman]

93 years ago a Vickers Vimy nearly made it as far, having taken off from St. Johns. Capt. Alcock is buried just a couple of miles from my house.

[Fairdealfrank]

IIRC there used to be a statue of Captains Alcock and Brown at Heathrow, just down from the old terminal 3. Guess it's gone now(?)

[Skipness One Echo]

It's outside the Visitor's Centre on the Northern Perimeter Rd nowadays, I think....

[nivsy]

In fact I used this service two weeks ago on the A319. Nothing to get overly excited about. The flight time was around 5 hours...reasonable load around 80% I should think. Curtailed IFE - but at least it worked unlike other AC flights I have endured recently. Don't know why they bother with the half a filled roll for "dinner". Seriously one half filled roll!!! Pathetic...better with nothing....having said that the breakfast served up around an hour before wheels down LHR was ok. The cabin crew all appeared to have an attitude that they wished they were somewhere else.

Nivsy

[ara01jbb]

The cabin crew all appeared to have an attitude that they wished they were somewhere else.

I seem to recall that in previous years this was the only AC service that didn't involve a crew night-stop in LHR, although the new timings suggest that is no longer the case? Perhaps one reason they were a little off?

[canuck slf]

That cabin crew attitude on AC is pretty well standard issue system wide I find. It is a function of their poisionous labour relations and an entitlement culture.
Very difficult to see how things will get better as WetJet slow eats away at their domestic and north american market share. The Federal government protects them from Emirates style competition, but slowly even that protection is being eroded too, Virgin entering LHR-YVR for instance.

[nivsy]

certainly not a bad thing the competition in my view. I had never flown AC before but am a well seasoned traveller with numerous airlines. I undertook various sectors with AC earlier this month ranging from B777 to Vancouver from Heathrow, A330 from Calgary to Toronto - an Air Canada Express service from Toronto Harbour to Montreal, Emb 190 from Montreal to Halifax, another Emb190 from Halifax to St John's and then the A319 back to London.

All flights (except the Dash 8 flight on Express which was excellent and had lovely crew) were average to poor with issues ranging from faulty IFE, no IFE, horrible food, brash staff on ground and in the air, and frankly I will just not fly them again and ensure that all colleagues and friends etc are aware of my impressions. Shame though because the E190 is a neat small airplane. And what is this AC policy that lets positioning staff simply take the Business Class seats? Looks like they have fairly good conditions to me compared to some!

Nivsy

[SecondDog]

Any of you insiders know how negotiations for a BFS-YYZ run in 2013 are coming along? is there any realistic chance of it coming to fruition.

[jimbo canuck]

I try to avoid AC even though they are the only option from my local airport (YYB). I prefer to drive 4 hours to Toronto and use Westjet. The last time I flew AC was in 2010 because I had to get to a family funeral in Saskatchewan in a hurry and the WS schedule didn't work.
The Express service from YTZ has to compete with Porter, who have excellent service. Thus the AC service has to be good to compete.

Jimbo

[MarkD]

YTZ AC Express is operated by Sky Regional Airlines for AC. As noted above, YTZ service is an attempt to get Porter's passengers back so between a franchisee looking to make an impression and the need to compete with a service-focused airline it's not surprising the YTZ sector was a cut above. I've been fortunate in the AC sectors I've flown being pretty standard service wise but have heard some horror stories. It does give the lie to "privatise something and it will get cheaper and service better" - AC has been private for a long time now and all that seems to have changed much is an asset strip/breakup of an integrated operation leaving the core airline poorer due to cashouts rather than sitting on a massive pile of cash to not only invest in its own operation but those of its partners.

A cash rich AC could, for example, have participated in financing a restructuring of BD in order to preserve Star presence at LHR (more important to AC than LH I'd have thought).

[1DC]

Flew from heathrow to calgary and back from Vancouver, two years ago on an old 767 each time. Cabin crew were not enthusiastic but on the return noticed the French speakers were getting a better deal than the English speakers so ordered my drink in French and got a smile..

[WHBM]

That cabin crew attitude on AC is pretty well standard issue system wide I find. It is a function of their poisionous labour relations and an entitlement culture.
The entitlement culture extends up to the management as well.

Some years ago, ny last AC sector were on this same route being discussed, London to St Johns and return. In those days a 767 which continued to Halifax NS. Extremely expensive as it was Christmas, but portrayed as "full scheduled service, not charter-like". Got on the 767, instead of normal configuration it was one of their "charter-like" fleet used for trips to Hawaii etc with high density seating and a restricted galley. Described to us by the base management at St Johns as "well, it was peak time, we needed an aircraft with maximum seating .....".

On the return Halifax sent through the aircraft having loaded up all of their overbookings so about 20 people from St Johns, maybe 25% of those waiting for the flight, were IDB'd, and sent the next morning to Montreal, of all places, to come back on the evening flight from there with 24 hour delay.

noticed the French speakers were getting a better deal than the English speakers so ordered my drink in French and got a smile..Standard Air Canada crew practice from their huge Montreal base which seems to service much of the system, where the Quebec-ers stick it on English speakers at every opportunity.