[vincevoltaire]

My family and I travelled to Japan about a month ago. We checked-in in Vancouver, and the lady who served us at the checkin counter committed quite a few mistakes which completely screwed up our flight experience. Her first mistake was not telling us that she was unable to book any seats for us as it was full (we arrived with 2 hours to spare, and somehow, Air Canada overbooked a flight which we had reserved over 6 months ago). Her next mistake was confidently telling us (twice!) that we did not need to pick up our checked-in luggage in Tokyo on our way to Nagoya. Her third mistake was by entering my wife as a child in the ticket from Tokyo to Nagoya.

To continue, after checking in thinking that everything was ok, we had lunch and when we arrived at the gate, we were told that we did not have seats and should have reported as soon as possible. We basically had a chance to not fly at all. They eventually managed to find us all seats, but they put each of us in separate places on the airplane (I have 3 kids: 12, 9, and 7). This next part is not their fault, but my son ended up getting airsick in the middle of the flight, and since none of us were seated close to him, his kind neighbour helped me out while he was vomiting into the bag. My wife got paged, and it was at that point that one of the stewardesses finally apologized to us for them not working hard enough to get us all seated together. By the time we arrived in Tokyo, my son was barely standing, and no one in Air Canada offered any sort of wheelchair. So he was leaning on me the whole time. We arrived at the gate to our connecting flight to Nagoya, and we were scolded by the Japanese officials for not picking up our luggage. We told them that Air Canada assured us that we did not need to pick-up our luggage in Tokyo, and they icily told us, 'well, they made a mistake'. We had to go back and pick-up our luggage from the baggage claim. Time was short so we rushed back only to find out that we couldn't go through because of the third mistake mentioned above. The Japanese officials basically had to re-type our ticket! We barely made our connecting flight.

So I sent Air Canada an email with all the details. I got a response back (which I appreciated) from Michelle Sturgis (apparently, that's the name they use for these types of correspondences) with an offer of a 15% off for all the troubles they caused. At first, I thought that that was a great touch, until I saw all the limitations they put in: can not be combined with any offer or discount (I'm part of their mailing list, and in the emails I regularly receive from them, they always offer 15% off); limited to only 2 people (there's 5 in my family); offer expires in 1 year (I hardly travel). They basically offered me nothing for our troubles.

I guess the lesson here is that when flying with Air Canada, just assume the worst service to be safe.