My travel experiences over recent months in Europe and North America have been mostly good to date, but I got to experience first hand the "chaos" in Canada yesterday flying YUL-YYC. It probably doesn't help that it was the Canada Day public holiday, but YUL was very very busy. Most flights were 1-2 hours late.
My flight was due to depart at 9.15pm yesterday, but didn't take off until after 4am this morning. A combination of issues - very late inbound aircraft, then there were no 777 pilots available in Montreal so they had to fly some in from Toronto. And to top it off, we were delayed another hour after the tow truck pushing back the aircraft malfunctioned.
I was booked in J but of course the lounge closed at 9pm so I spent a delightful 5 hours waiting in the terminal with all shops closed (since it was the middle of the night).
I'm glad I didn't check in a bag as I had a connecting flight as well!
Air Canada's CEO just sent out a long apology email to Aeroplan members and announced that it's cancelling a heap of flights from its schedule over the next few months. Probably for the better as it doesn't have the capacity to operate the schedule it was selling. (The flight I was booked on from YUL-YYC has been either cancelled or at least several hours late every day for the past week.)
