Air Canada screwed up

Coming home from Washington yesterday took forever.

My flight was to leave at 5:59 p.m. The plane scheduled for the incoming flight (as it happens, from Toronto) was delayed in Toronto because of mechanical difficulties -- and they spent too long (two hours) trying to fix it before abandoning that and ordering up another plane.

It was too long because by the time they got the replacement plane, the original crew was over their legal/contractual hours-served-per-day limit, so there was another delay while a new crew was found, and then once they finally found that crew, an electrical storm had begun in DC, so they wouldn't let the plane take off from Toronto (because they didn't know if a ground crew could go out on the tarmac when it arrived in DC).

Of course, Air Canada should have known about the length of time their crew could serve, and the potential bad weather brewing in DC, and so the decision to swap planes should have been made earlier; if it had been, the original crew could have been used, and they would have made it to DC long before the bad weather.

Air Canada did not handle it well at Reagan; communication from their gate clerks was spotty most of the time (and for long periods we were abandoned with no Air Canada representative at the gate). Passengers got justifiably pointed in their comments (although no one got out of line), and one of the clerks made it worse by twice calling over police officers, as if asking questions were a criminal offense.

At least we were waiting in the departure lounge. The poor guys coming to DC from Toronto spent two hours in the replacement plane on the tarmac in Toronto before they got the go-ahead to take-off.

We weren't in the air until after midnight. Total delay: over six hours.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site