Stuck on the Tarmac and wishing I had flown with Air Canada
We often associate companies with negative qualities. A few of them have such negative brands that they fail to attract customers at all. Neither Wal-Mart nor McDonalds are known for their high quality and just the mention of Exxon brings out images of oil slick and pollution. Negative brands are often the result of poor ethical decision on the company’s part but more often than not, customer service is the reason why people dislike certain companies. For those unfortunate enough to have to deal with Telus on a regular basis, you will know that their customer service isn’t that great.
But Telus isn’t the worse culprit in Canada. No the company that brings all Canadians in agreement is Air Canada. Everyone has a story of having to pay for drinks, no food being served on 5 hour flights, being squished in seats so tight your legs can’t move. They are the worst company to fly with.
When booking our latest trip I had three goals. Avoid Air Canada, avoid Charles the Gaulle airport and lay-overs. We found the perfect flight with KLM. Leaving from Vancouver we would fly to Amsterdam, then Amsterdam Bordeaux. Unfortunately last night after spending an hour or so on the tarmac, we were told that our plane wouldn’t leave and we would have to come back today. After contacting KLM and chatting to them for what seemed like 3 hours, we are now booked on North West Airlines leaving today at 2pm. We’ll be flying from Vancouver to Detroit, Detroit to Paris, then Paris to Bordeaux, which involves 3 lay-overs and the dreaded Charles de Gaulle airport. All of this because Air Canada has a bad reputation!
It will be interesting to see if KLM will follow up on this situation and contact us to apologize. I’ll worry about that later, if I can just get to France…