Segacs's World I Know

Posts Tagged ‘air canada’

What will Stephen Harper do with a majority government? That was the question on everyone’s lips just 50 days ago, after an election shocker gave the Tories their long-awaited majority with 166 seats.

Oh, I heard all the platitudes. It won’t be so bad, people said. Give them a chance. They’re not so scary. They won’t do anything that they didn’t do as a minority (not like that was very reassuring, either).

Yeah, right.

In politics, it’s customary to review the “first 100 days”. Unfortunately, Harper and his cronies have been so busy doing shit, that waiting until 100 days for this review seemed excessive.

(And yes, I know it’s not really the first 50 days of majority government. The 41st Parliament only convened on June 2nd, which is in fact less than 3 weeks ago. That’s a frighteningly short period of time in which Harper has already managed to do an awful lot of damage. But it has been 50 days since the election, so I think the post title is appropriate.)

Let’s look at what’s happened in the 50 days since the May 2nd election, shall we?

• Workers’ rights have taken a serious beating, with back to work legislation being tabled against Canada Post, and threatened against Air Canada (who struck a deal to avoid it). In the case of Canada Post, arguably the legislation is against the crown corporation, which has locked out the workers. And those of you who know me understand that I have rather ambiguous feelings about labour unions that have too much power. But, especially in the case of Air Canada – a private company with competitive options for the consumer – the Tory government’s swift response against any labour rights whatsoever crosses the line even for me. There’s a happy medium in there, and this ain’t it.
• Senate appointments for three Tory MP candidates who lost in their ridings called into question not only the appointment process itself, but Harper’s own promises to reform it. Canadians didn’t even blink. Beyond that, he’s threatening to abolish the Senate altogether if they don’t cave to his extortion cooperate with his reforms.
• Asbestos exports are once again being defended by the Tories, who apparently feel that cancer is okay as long as it happens to people in other countries.
• Job cuts in the public sector are coming pretty much right away. One of the first areas to be hit? Auditors. Cause, y’know, Harper doesn’t want anyone actually noticing how badly he’s been cooking the books – and how badly he plans to continue doing so.
• And that doesn’t even take into account the fact that Harper is about to appoint two judges to the Supreme Court – something that will have ramifications for decades.

When you consider that there are still most of 5 years to go in his term, and that nothing prevents him from being re-elected, it’s downright terrifying.

Air Canada has been directed to offer nut-free zones on its flights by the CTA, in response to a complaint filed by a passenger with severe nut allergies.

As much as I sympathize with people with nut and peanut allergies – and yes, you know who you are – I have to wonder, isn’t this a little bit like offering non-smoking areas on flights? I mean, everyone’s breathing the same recycled air everywhere on the plane, right?

I also have to wonder, does “nut-free” refer only to the food, or will slightly-crazy passengers and crew have to change seats, too?

Air Canada, not satisfied with being one of the worst customer-service companies in existence, has found a new way to price-gouge customers: Charge a fee to deal with flight hassles:

Trumpeting the service as unique in North America, Air Canada – which had a net profit of $429 million in 2007 – yesterday unveiled a new travel-assistance program, On My Way. For a one-way fee of $25 (flights below 1,000 miles) or $35 (above 1,000), payable when the flight is booked on aircanada.com, the airline will look after alternate flight arrangements and general logistics problems occasioned by flight, traffic or weather-related delays beyond its control.

[ . . . ]

Michael Janigan of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre in Ottawa wasn’t impressed. He suggested Out Of My Way as a more fitting name.

“It’s part and parcel of a continuing effort to try and make the service extended to you when you buy a ticket less and less. The expectation would be that if you paid for a flight, you’d be rebooked on the next available flight. I’m hesitant to figure what’s next with the airlines. Maybe washroom privileges (for a fee)? We’ll have to wait and see.”

No kidding. First they take away the food. Then they take away the baggage “privileges”. Then they outsource the lost luggage service to India. Now they won’t even rebook you on the next flight if your flight is delayed or canceled.

Air Canada continues to demonstrate that, just when you think it has come up with every possible way to screw its customers, there are always a few more to be found. The next time it claims bankruptcy and begs for a bailout from its financial woes, I hope the Canadian government has the good sense to finally let Air Canada sink, once and for all.

Honestly, I should turn this into a regular column, due to the frequency of my rants against Air Canada on this blog. But they just keep on asking for it.

My flight home from New York today was delayed by 3-1/2 hours. That’s for a flight that only takes an hour. The vague description of the cause was something to do with “equipment delays”. The airline kept us waiting in the terminal all that time without offering us so much as a free soda.

Then I got home and saw this:

Air Canada’s efforts to burnish its public image were dealt a blow Sunday when the carrier was forced to cancel some flights because its pilots reached the limit on their flying time for the month.

Oh. So that’s what they mean by “equipment delays”.

Air Canada’s advertisements feature all sorts of promises of fun stuff that’s “coming soon”, like personal entertainment sets on all seats. A word of advice to the management team at Air Canada: the main thing passengers want to be “coming soon” is their flight. You might want to spend a bit less money and effort focusing on useless nonsense, and a bit more on basics like, oh, say, customer service. Just a thought.

So it looks like there’s going to be another referendum in a few years. And with the federalist forces in complete disarray, the result could be disastrous. Even if most Quebeckers don’t really want to separate, they may be persuaded to vote yes if the yes side runs a much better campaign. We all know that there will be no more federal government-funded sponsorship programs. And the provincial Liberals will need someone in opposition better equipped to fight than Jean Charest, that’s for sure.

But mostly, what is sorely lacking is vision. Though the vision of a sovereign Quebec is an unrealistic pipe dream, many Quebecers buy into it because people prefer vision to pessimism. The brightly-coloured posters advertising that a “yes” vote would “make it possible” didn’t really need to get into the details of what exactly would be possible; it was a vision. A sharp contrast to the the “no” campaign in 1995, which was a negative, fear-based campaign focused mainly on dispelling the “yes” campaign’s lies.

In that spirit, here are some things that the federalist side can do to campaign for Canadian unity:

• “Federalists Come Home” campaign

Invite as many former Quebecers who have moved to the Rest of Canada to move back home for the minimum period required in order to be eligible to vote in the next referendum. Open the floodgates and welcome back our expats from Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary just in time to give the federalist side the needed numbers at the polls to deliver a resounding defeat to the sovereignty forces.

• “Birthright Canada” trips

Hey, it’s a big success for Israel. Send groups of Quebec college students on free 10-day trips to some of the most beautiful parts of Canada. Air Canada could provide free flights in exchange for their government subsidies. After 10 days of partying in Whistler or Banff, my bet is most young Quebecers will think twice before giving up being Canadian.

• Colour War

So Gerald Larose wants a colour war? Fine, we’ll give him one. Let’s show our Canadian colours by celebrating the “anniversaries” of all dates relevant to Canada with “pro-Federalism signs on balconies, marches, conferences and cultural events” of our own – but more, bigger, and louder. Canada Day, Flag Day, Law Day, the anniversary of the 1972 Canada-Russia hockey summit… there’s no shortage of opportunities.

• Switch the Question lifeline

“Yes” sounds so much nicer than “No”, doesn’t it? Since the question of the next referendum is sure to be just as confusing as the last one, let’s lobby to get a question written that would make “Yes” a vote for federalism. Not only do we get the nicer, more positive campaign term, but the 40% of Quebecers who don’t have a clue what the vote means might accidentally vote “Yes” thinking it’s a vote for sovereignty. Which would be OK, because most of them want to stay in Canada anyway. So really, we’d be doing them a favour.

• Secret Weapons

How much money do you think it would take to bribe Gilles Duceppe into working as a secret agent for the Federalist side?

Feel free to tack on your own.

Air Canada ground crews at Pearson airport in Toronto went on strike yesterday, essentially shutting down the airline’s operations for a few hours, and resulting in the cancellation of dozens of flights.

The reason for the strike? Workers were upset because they were facing disciplinary action for punching out early:

Bill Trbovitch — another union spokesman — told The Canadian Press the dispute was over how workers punch out at the end of a shift. “We know that it is over a long-standing issue,” he said.

CFTO’s Graham Richardson reported that up to 100 employees were facing disciplinary action over abusing how they signed out, with some people signing out each other out late.

Air Canada did a long investigation of this practice that included the use of hidden cameras to gather evidence.

“This was coming to a head today, in terms of firing people over this,” he said. “That’s when union members took it into their own hands and walked off the job and shut down the biggest airport in the country.”

However, Duffy said a number of workers said the problem was a known one for years and they didn’t know why Air Canada was going after it now. “They say it’s an uncontracted perk,” he added.

That, in a nutshell, is what’s wrong with the collective work ethic of far too many unions. “How dare they expect us to work?”

Air Canada is moving their lost luggage line to India. So now, not only will we get to deal with the frustration of lost luggage, but we’ll also get the added bonus frustration of trying to get it back.

I wonder if the call centre employees at the lost luggage line will know how to fix a computer… cause the ones at the Dell tech support certainly don’t.

…was amazing. I had a fabulous trip, and am anxiously awaiting the development of my photos.

The long flights weren’t exactly fun, especially since there seems to be some Murphy’s law of flying that says that the screeching child in the waiting lounge will inevitably end up sitting in my row. Air Canada scored another few points in the “we’re sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but we don’t give a shit about our customers” game. Can’t say I expected otherwise.

Israel itself was great, of course. I spent a week touring, visiting the beaches, the nightspots, Jerusalem and the Kotel, riding a camel in the desert, eating in a Bedouin tent, climbing Masada at sunrise, catching up on sleep at the Dead Sea, touring ancient ruins at Caesaria, eating Mickey D’s in Zichron Yaakov, dancing the hora in a wine cellar, shopping, and eating all the watermelon I could imagine. Mmmmm. Then I spent a week hanging out in Haifa, complete with clubs, pubs, shopping malls, and the beach.

I think I need a vacation to recover from my vacation.

The fluency level of my Hebrew shot up thanks to two weeks of practice. But while I watched plenty of brainless TV, I didn’t so much as read a newspaper the entire time I was in Israel. Funny how here at home, I follow the news from the Mideast obsessively… but while there, I was more cut off from the real world than I’ve been in ages. I didn’t even hear about the tragic suicide bombing in Tel Aviv until I called home and was forced to reassure worried relatives that yes, I was fine. It’s kind of a relief to see how life goes on as usual there. People ride the buses, shop in the malls, go to clubs and cafes and restaurants. Aside from bag checks at most entrances, I didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary. To anyone who is considering a trip to Israel but is wary because of the news headlines, I urge you to go. It’s fine. Really.

Once I get my photos back, I may post a few, if I get around to it. In the meantime, I’m playing catch-up, so bear with me if posting is slow for a while. It may be a couple of days until I get over the jetlag and finish unpacking and catching up on my life.

Back to regularly scheduled programming shortly.

Working in a customer service field, I’ve developed somewhat of an intolerance to being treated poorly when I myself am the customer. But my recent dealings with several notorious large companies have led me to wonder whether my basic expectations for service are somehow unreasonable.

First, my dealings with Dell gave me nothing but sleepless nights and heartburn. My computer is still giving me hardware errors. It’s been doing it for over 6 months now. But since the customer service line has been utterly useless at helping me solve the errors, I’ve pretty much opted to live with them. It’s just easier that way.

Then, of course, there’s Air Canada, the national carrier Canadians love to hate. It’s the only monopoly I can think of that still can’t figure out how to stave off bankruptcy and make a profit. Horror stories are the norm rather than the exception. It’s as though the airline feels that “customer service” means not going bankrupt, as opposed to – er – actual service.

Today, Air Canada ranked up another strike, when I found out that my flights to and from Israel next month had changed times rather significantly, and nobody had let me know. When I called, I was told “oh, sorry, I see you were on a call list; someone would have called you eventually”. Er, that’s great. When exactly were they going to tell me that I was leaving 12 hours earlier? When I showed up at the gate?

My woes with Bell Mobility have to about top the list, though. My cell phone has been broken for over 3 months, and was sent in 3 times for repair without success. I got tossed back and forth between different service lines without any kind of problem resolution. The store would blame the manufacturer, the manufacturer would blame the store, the customer service line would blame everyone else… and nobody was willing to help.

I finally complained to the executive office, where I was finally offered a replacement cell phone. Today, I found out that on top of everything else, my replacement phone was sent out two weeks ago… to someone in Kitchener, Ontario. *Sigh*.

Companies are constantly looking for new ideas and innovations to be more profitable. They spend millions on customer research, millions more on advertising the latest products and features… and yet none of them seem to realize that all most of us want is helpful service and products that work.

Yes, it really is that simple.

Maybe we get such lousy service because we allow these companies to walk all over us. There’s only 4 cellphone companies in Canada, and only one major national airline. They get away with treating their customers like dirt, because none of their competitors are any better. So they know we’re a captive audience.

But enough is enough. I think it’s high time we demanded better.

Update 06/07: Problems solved with Bell Mobility, who sent me a brand-new fancy camera phone to replace my broken one. And hey, it *only* took 3 months!

Also, problems solved with Air Canada Aeroplan, where I found a – believe it or not – nice and helpful customer service supervisor who resolved everything for me, was friendly, and went out of her way to help. I rant and complain a lot but I have to give credit where credit is due.

Dell’s still messed up. But two out of three ain’t bad.

Looks like my Air Canada plane ticket is safe after all. Good. One less thing to worry about.