Well then. I could tell you about a lot of things right now, including big skies/flat prairie, my belief that it is silly to order seafood when you are as far from an ocean as you can possibly get on this planet, a dam that creates a 44,000 ha reservoir, a surprisingly functional sustainable living concept, and all sorts of silliness involving too much Chilean wine to make the Saskatchewan landscape prettier. But that is for another day, because right now, I feel the need to unburden myself about air travel.
Air Canada is not one of those airlines that frequently (ever!) make it to the "best" (food, comfort, service, uniforms, toilets, entertainment program...) lists for air travel. Nevertheless, it is the frequent recipient of cash-for-boarding-pass deals for three reasons: 1. they fly where I need to go, and as directly as possible when your home base is Lester B. Pearson Toronto International Airport aka YYZ; 2. they book their Canada-U.S. flights as one-ways, thus allowing Johanna-style complicated travel when necessary; and 3. I am a points geek, so much so that I have attained the coveted top-tier status and thus get to take my cheap luggage over to the executive class counter and use the lounge when I am not actually out of the "free stuff! and I have a pocket!" phase yet.
So there are things I appreciate. But there are others that I do not. On Sunday last, Gwen and I showed up at the airport for a 9:50 a.m. flight (as per our e-tickets) at the ungodly and ridiculously too early time of 8:35. This is not because we are so punctual, but because of the shuttle service we use and its tendency to deliver you far too early. This was fine with us: the lounge has free stuff! And we sashayed up to the snotty counter where they are actually polite and presented ourselves, surrendered our bags - which were tagged with a bright orange priority arrow, and were told that we were cutting it close. Apparently, our silly flight left at 9:00. Not that the travel agent (I don't usually use travel agents, but was told to do so for this trip) emailed us that itinerary update. So our time in the lounge was reduced to slugging back the cappucino and cramming toast into our faces and then tromping on down to the gate.
Where the boarding time was listed as 9:15. Huh? We checked the flight numbers, they were the same (and then we wandered over to the desk, where they took away our boarding passes and gave us ones in the snotty section of the plane where they actually feed you. We were somewhat mollified, even though it was 9:30 before we boarded. And 10:15 before the plane left the gate.)
Regina is a three carousel airport. At any given time, there is perhaps one plane to unload. At our time, there was just our weenie little CRJ to unload. The CRJ is just a wee thing. So wee that, while it takes a good half hour before the bags start to show, it is in fact too wee to take all of the bags the passengers checked - and the priority tagged bags were left in Toronto. Not so the many much bigger and much heavier bags of exchange students travelling home, but I am quibbling. And I'm probably quibbling too when I tell you it took another 45 minutes to file our stupid missing baggage claim. But we were very clear! Bags to be delivered to our temporary address, here is my cell phone number! There were three or four flights after ours, we were optimistic. And who doesn't enjoy spending an entire Sunday in aiports? The only sad part was, of course, that this was keeping us from exploring the dramatic scenery around Regina, but it really is a tough choice, airport or prairie.
So. Two more flights landed while we were toddling about our new digs and cabbing it to Dave's house and drinking many pisco sours, and then some more landed. And I got on the hated cellyphone and called the number on our claim, to find out where the bags are! After all, we were in our plane clothes, and we had a meeting the next day. But the call centre you reach when you call the claims department is the telephone equivalent of using the on-line form: useless. Utterly useless, actually. All evening, they assured me that my bag was "in transit". Even after I pointed out that the last flight for the day had landed in Regina already. No, no, the bag is still coming, they will call you when they have it. At 11:30 p.m., we bought toothbrushes...
Next day, at lunch (after being highly entertained by watching Gwen give her talk in a sweatsuit! handing out imaginary copies of the paper I was supposed to deliver!), I got the call centre equivalent of eff off: our computers are down, we cannot help you, goodbye. I got a little cranky at that point (ok, there were several points, I kept calling back to terrorize them and demand to speak to someone useful, but they are united in their uselessness pact. Because while they work for Air Canada, I'm sure they aren't Air Canada, ma'am. Much like my Toronto Star experience, though this call centre is in India from the sounds of the accents).
By 6 p.m. - now 31 hours since my flight had landed - I am still met by uselessness. Better still, they cannot put me through to the baggage claims counter at the Regina airport. Because ma'am, we do not have that number. And calling all the Air Canada numbers I can find, I always end up at the we cannot help you ma'am ladies. Sigh. Pissed off and smelly, that was me. And tired of slamming the phone down, no no, I wanted to vent my frustrations in person!
So we went to the airport. Where our luggage was peacefully sitting, tagged with our names and temporary address, and the flight number it came in on. The internet tells me that this flight landed a mere four hours after my original flight, and the luggage was feeling lost and rejected for a full 26 hours after that point. So, despite my delight at being reunited with a change of clothes (and, sigh, copies of the paper I needed at 9 a.m.), I expressed some mild frustrations to the baggage guy. Who expressed his very low customer service quotient, and claimed that they couldn't call us because the system was down and thus they did not have my phone number.
I, of course, failed to point out that:
1. the bags were tagged with information that they could only have from the same file as contained the phone number.
2. we asked that the bags be delivered right away, not that they call, and there was a porter on duty the entire time.
3. the system was most definitely not down during the seven hours between arrival of my bag and toothbrush buying, as evidenced by the call centre runaround but ma'am your luggage is in transit game.
4. Air Canada uniforms are ugly and the snacks in the Regina self-service lounge are woefully inadequate.
Yeah. By #4, I was totally getting off track anyway. I went home and changed my clothes and drank some Chilean red wine.
(And when I came back today, the Toronto Star call centre that calls on behalf of the Toronto Star but does not represent the Toronto Star once again called, and had left me a message offering free Monday to Friday delivery! Because "I want you to stop sending me any and all papers" clearly sounds like "I need to think about it but I'm very interested, please call back six or seven times until I have finished thinking!")
p.s. yeah, I know all about the packing important things in the carry-on and flying carry-on only, but carry-on only is a major pain in the ass in CRJs where the overhead bins are big enough to hold a toothbrush and, if you're lucky, a trial-size tube of toothpaste, and not much else, and I am disorganized and don't have an underwear compartment in my briefcase, ok? And we shared the red wine with several of the people who were in the be-sweatsuited, invisible paper'd talk, so it's all good. Because, upon discovering the lack of luggage, we did take a cab to the liquor store and stocked up on $141 of good-will-generating liquids - planning ahead skills that most of our colleagues did not possess...
Posted by Johanna at April 29, 2006 09:25 PM