Never say Never ...

...but it will be a long time before I voluntarily fly with Air Canada again.

I was quite looking forward to my Vancouver - Toronto flight. Only four hours, the OH had pre-bought me a refreshment voucher and someone at the congress had been waxing lyrical about the amount of legroom you get on Air Canada planes. Plus the OH and Son No 1 would be waiting for me when I got off at the other end.

Let's do the pluses first. There was loads of legroom, so much that even when the person in front reclined his seat I did not feel that my personal space was being encroached upon, let alone get bruised knees and a rise in blood pressure, as is normal for me on other carriers. I didn't know how I was supposed to claim whatever it was that my meal voucher would get me, but in fact the cabin staff came to me and gave me a list of options. Two courses! for what had seemed a very small amount of money. So far, so great. 

But - we were an hour late setting off, and made up no time in the air. When we landed in Toronto there wasn't a gate for us  so we sat for anther 45 minutes on the tarmac until one became available. Worst of all we then waited two hours for our baggage to appear! 

I would not have known it was two hours but several passengers, obviously wiser to the ways of Air Canada than I was, had noted their time of arrival at the baggage carousel, and continued to monitor the time taken for the next 120 minutes, all the while grumbling about how rubbish Air Canada was in general It did not help that after about an hour, and without explanation, our flight disappeared from the sign over the carousel completely, leaving me to wish that I had after all put a spare set of underwear in my cabin baggage, because I suddenly started to suspect that the hold baggage was not going to appear again ever.

It turned up eventually thank goodness, and I tottered out into arrivals to greet a very tired and understandably frustrated husband and son. Plans for eating together, perfectly reasonable when your ETA was round about eight in the evening had to be abandoned, on the grounds that it was almost midnight and all any of us wanted to see was a bed.