Air Canada flight fiasco
Peggy Curan
Montreal Gazette
Tuesday, July 08, 2008
DORVAL - Passengers on Air Canada flight No. 874 joked they'd never seen a crew mutiny before.
Montrealer Sandra Dow said her June 26 trip from Montreal to Frankfurt could qualify as "the flight from hell" - if the Boeing 777 had done more than taxi back and forth on the tarmac at Pierre Elliott Trudeau International airport.
It took flight crew and ground personnel four hours to decide that funny noise in the cargo bay - Dow thought it sounded like popcorn - was nothing to worry about.
Except for sporadic updates from the pilot over the public address system, passengers who boarded at 7:15 for an 8 p.m. flight were left to fend for themselves and watch a movie. There was no food or coffee and only passengers with the gumption to go to the galley and ask for it got water.
At midnight, when the flight was finally cleared for takeoff, passengers were parched and famished. But by then the flight crew was ready to bolt, and the flight was cancelled.
"It was terrible," Dow said. "It was a pure screw-up."
Over the course of the evening, the crew checked the cargo doors and the plane was hoisted on a hydraulic jack to check the tires and gears. When that didn't yield results, a mechanic was brought on board to investigate, but the plane was making the same noises after he left. That's when passengers and crew members started to bail.
"It's still going pop-pop-pop," Dow said. "There's a passenger in the front who says, 'I'm getting off the plane,' and he makes a big fuss. Other people may have gotten off at the same time. ... And one of the cabin crew left. So they have to get the luggage off."
The pilot told passengers he wanted to make one last check of the plane's seals, which took another 30 minutes
"The captain gets on and says: 'Okay, everything has checked out just fine and we're going.' So we pull out and we get down right to the point where we are cleared for take-off and he says, 'I'm sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but some of the crew want to get off ... and any other passengers who want to can leave as well."
Back at the gate, the pilot again apologized for the delay. "We are just waiting for our new crew to arrive. They should be here in about an hour and 20 minutes and then we are good to go."
It was after 11 p.m. and passengers were also starting to look worried. En route to Milan to meet her 20-year-old daughter, Dow was anxious to get going. "And then I look around and, think that the passenger on my right and the passenger on my left have a point. If the crew won't fly it, why should we? So you know what, I think I'm going to get off the plane, too. Inconvenient as it is, I've never been on a plane where the crew won't fly."
Just after midnight, the captain shut down the engine. "We're not going tonight, the flight is cancelled, take all of your belongings," he told passengers.
But Dow said there was only a skeleton crew on duty at the ticket counter.
"We lined up and were told our flights were being rebooked, but (they) could not say how."
An hour later, travellers who had been turfed from the plane were fed up of waiting for a shuttle bus to the hotel. Many were halfway to the Hilton on foot when they were stopped by airport security and ordered to surrender their baggage carts.
"It was a very rough walk the rest of the way," Dow said. "When we arrived at the Hilton, it was a free-for-all in the lobby." She finally got to bed at 2:30 a.m., knowing they had to be back at the airport by 7 a.m.
Some lucky passengers had scored vouchers for Tim Horton's at the airport that night. Others were promised breakfast - only to learn they had to make up the difference between their $7 voucher and the hotel's offering - a $20 buffet. "Most people shelled out for this since no one had eaten the night before."
At 10 a.m., passengers left Montreal for Frankfurt.
"They told us they had checked the aircraft overnight and decided we were good to go. That's the plane we were on, minus quite a few people who decided they were not getting on that plane."
Before landing in Frankfurt, passengers received a letter of apology with a $100 voucher, redeemable on another Air Canada flight within the next year.
Dow, a university business professor and frequent flier, has filed an official complaint with Air Canada, but she's not holding her breath waiting for answers. To date, she has received an automatic email response advising her that processing time for "general customer concerns" is 21 days - lost luggage claims take eight weeks.
Yesterday, Air Canada's Isabelle Arthur confirmed the flight was delayed 13 hours because of a maintenance problem.
"Safety is our number one priority and is never compromised. This is why it took quite some time to undertake the necessary safety checks," Arthur said in an email reply. She was unable to explain the nature of the problem.
"Unfortunately, once the flight was cleared, crewing and curfew issues forced further delays until the next morning. We understand that these types of delays disrupt our passengers' travel plans. We have offered compensation to passengers (including meal and hotel vouchers when needed) and apologized for any inconvenience this situation may have caused."
Arthur initially said water was served, but later conceded some passengers may have had to fetch their own.
"As for vouchers, we sometimes hand some out, sometimes we just tell customers they can go to a given restaurant at the airport and show their boarding card and don't actually always physically pass out cards. A delay affects everyone differently, and the compensation was provided as a goodwill gesture."
Dow said the $100 coupon is a poor substitute for the 230 euros (about $340) she spent on her room in Milan, overseas cellphone calls to alert her daughter to the delay, stingy meal vouchers and the disruptions to her journey.
"I heard many people saying they would never fly Air Canada again," Dow said. "My ticket price was almost $2,000 for economy class. I think the $100 discount is a joke."
pcurran@thegazette.canwest.com
© Montreal Gazette
Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij is defiantly a keeper. 
