Air Farce

Recently I traveled home from Toronto on Air Canada, aka, Air Farce. What a joke.

For the first time in my life, I was bumped from a plane. I didn't ever know why these kind of things happened. Turns out these things happen because you buy a ticket. Oops, stupid me. But because they sell too many tickets, sometimes you get fucked. Because when you don't check in early and get a seat assigned, you are flying by the seat of Air Canada's pants. It doesn't have to make sense.

You see, what they do is assign a certain number of seats for a flight. After that, you get put on a list. And then at the time of the flight, they go down the list (alpha-fucking-betically from what I can tell), and give people tickets. So if you're on one of these lists and your last name is Zzazzooz and everyone shows up, start looking for another flight.

The best part is when the ticket agent calls you over and explains that don't have a seat. The lady I talked to started with "Ok, here we go again." So think it doesn't happen very often? Oh, but "all the airlines do it." Sure thing. Do all the other airlines have problems on every flight I saw that day?

After being sent to the customer service desk, I waited in line for at least 15 minutes. The fucking line was so long that it blocked the hallway completely. It was probably 20 people deep. Clearly Air Canada doesn't overbook their customer service agents' shifts because there was only service from 2 and half people while I was there.

So I took my 200$ Air Canada voucher (aka garbage, as far as I'm concerned) and my 12$ meal ticket and went on my way. My agent told me it could have been worse because there was a Vancouver flight that day which was overbooked by over 30 people. 30 PEOPLE! Air Canada, setting new records in incompetence. And of course every meal in the airport is at least 12$ so the voucher doesn't get you very far.

After getting re-booked for a flight 3 hours later, the kind customer service agent said she was going to assign a seat for me because she didn't want to take the chance of me missing that flight too. Well thank you very fucking much! What a treat! You would think that would be automatic for someone you just inconvenienced for 3 hours with no free internet in the airport and you can't sit in this section of the restaurant because you ordered at the till and the fucking Colts game is going in and out of reception and they are sucking anyway so... fuck.

Of course when the next flight rolled around, I sat and watched a group of people go through the exact same thing that I did. Can you imagine how horrible it must be to be an Air Canada ticket agent? Having angry (would-be) passengers harassing you constantly trying to find out why they aren't getting onto the plane that they bought tickets for? The highlight came when a guy came on the plane at the last second and shortly thereafter the ticket agent came and said he had to get off the plane because the people whose seat he was taking had shown up late. Unsurprisingly, he was not all that happy about it. What a cock(pit) tease.

So, this was the first time in quite a while that I've flown Air Canada and their in-flight entertainment has improved, now that they have competent competition in WestJet. But unlike WestJet, all AC's programming is stored for on-demand. WestJet has a live bell TV feed, which was nice for watching Champions league soccer on my last trip to Toronto and sports highlights on the way out on this trip.

So without the opportunity to watch Sunday night football, I settled in to watch The Happening. But the way my night was going, I figured the movie system would crash halfway through. That would have been par for the course. But instead it worked fine. The problem with that though, was the The Happening was one of the worst movies I've seen in a long time. I mean, instead of the crazy twist at the end like all other M. Night. Shamalamadingdong's movies, it is the most expected possible ending. What the fuck was that?! Now I was wishing the damn movie had crashed.

The one redeeming moment was that my checked bag made it to Saskatoon on the first flight and was sitting there waiting for me in Saskatoon to pick it up right away. Though I'm surprised it wasn't sent to Albuquerque.

Well Air Canada, you bumped the wrong man. I will televise the revolution and it will taste like purple gatorade. On your planes, I shall not fly. Air Canada, you are officially ON NOTICE!