Livin' Livid

As expected, yesterday’s flight ended in rage and a renewed vow to never again fly Air Canada. As per the request of the airline, I arrived at the Ottawa airport two hours before scheduled departure. Made my way through security and waited patiently at the departure gate. As we approached boarding time, I approached the desk to ask them if they thought the plane would be on-time, because I had a quick connection to make. The agent (who was very nice and accommodating), let me know that the plane was ready and waiting, but one of the flight attendants hadn’t yet arrived. As it approached departure time, they even paged the flight attendant, saying that the flight crew was waiting for her. Scheduled departure time game and went before the flight attendant strolled up to the gate. Once she was on the flight, the gate agents announced that we would now have to wait until the flight crew finished their safety check before we could board. An hour later, we finally started boarding. When we got on board the head flight attendant apologized for the delay saying that the flight crew had a late start and no-one had worked on this plane before so the safety check took longer than anticipated.

I’d like to be clear on something…I have made more than my fair share of mistakes at work and at home and I don’t expect anyone else should be immune to error. However, showing up for work late, when you’ve never done that type of job before and messing up 150 people’s schedules because of it, is a little bit aggravating. I had to be up at 5:30 am to catch my flight. I set an alarm clock and had the front desk give me a wake up call, if I had shown up at the same time as the flight attendant (and the plane actually left on schedule), I would have gotten charged a “no show” fee, had to pay for a ticket change and gotten not an ounce of sympathy from the ticket agents or anyone else at Air Canada. Because of the delay in departure, I missed my flight to Whitehorse and had to spend an extra day in Vancouver waiting around. I was lucky to have friends here and I feel much more sympathy for the 10 or so passengers that were supposed to be heading to Osaka, Japan and missed their connection.

I think I will write a nice little letter to Air Canada, not because I think they will respond, but because I am so annoyed that putting my rage onto paper might be therapeutic.

Sierra posted this on Feb 19, 2007 from the outside | | permanent link