When Size is a Disadvantage: My Air Canada Story

At 7:30 we were told that the problem was not fixable and that we had to deplane and talk to the Air Canada rep about other arrangements. After we disembarked, we were told that a replacement plane had been arranged for us at the other end of the terminal. After a ten minute trek we discovered that the replacement plane was the one destined for Winnipeg, and that all the Winnipeg passengers had been given a new departure gate and later departure time. There was open discussion as to whether they were bumped to make room for the larger Toronto passenger group, and whether they would make it home at all that night. Announcements were few and far between, and it was left largely to the passengers to tell each other where their new gate was, and to organize ourselves. On top of that, the clerk at the gate said she had to go to look after her Winnipeg flight, so for half an hour there was no one from Air Canada at our ‘new’ gate at all. When they finally arrived, they clearly did not know how to manage such a situation, muttered to each other for fifteen minutes, and finally announced that because it was a different sized plane, all boarding passes would have to be reissued. Rather than just ‘mapping’ from the old seat assignments to the new ones, they reassigned every seat on a first come, first served basis. It took two of them 45 minutes to do this for about 150 passengers, and I was one of the first to board the new plane at 8:50. At 9:30 they told us that the new plane had a broken auxiliary engine so there would be no air conditioning until we pushed back. At 9:45 they told us that the auxiliary engine was also needed to jump-start the plane, and that the truck brought in to ‘boost’ the plane had failed to do so. The heat and smell at this point were suffocating. At 10:00 a second truck successfully boosted the plane, and at 10:20, almost 4 1/2 hours late, we took off.

The first apology we heard since the beginning of this ordeal came from the captain at 9:45. I got home just after midnight, eight hours after I had left my Montreal client — it would have been faster, more comfortable, and much cheaper, to drive. And other than a free beer or wine on board, no compensation was offered for the inconvenience.

What are the lessons from this story?

1. The value of prevention: It’s much better to prevent problems from occurring than to try to cope with them when they do. One mechanical problem every once in awhile is unavoidable even with good preventative maintenance; two back-to-back problems is inexcusable. Small airlines don’t have the luxury of bringing in ‘back-up’ aircraft, and in my experience they are better at this than the big guys.
2. The importance of not over-promising: All of the expected departure and arrival times given to us were wildly optimistic. Many passengers were arranging pick-ups and connecting flights by cell-phone, and had to change them at least six times. Smaller companies ‘get’ this: they give you a worst-case time, not a best-case one.
3. The value of agility: Why is there no automatic, computerized re-mapping of boarding passes when passengers need to change planes. This is not that rare an occurrence. If it had been a small airline, they would simply have honored all boarding passes on any seat in the same class on the aircraft, and not bothered assigning seats at all. In fact, some of them only have one class and have no assigned seats. And why couldn’t they break Standard Operating Procedure and have the check-in clerks stay where they were, instead of swapping back and forth with the gate changes?
4. The importance of courtesy: Too little information, too infrequently, inarticulately provided, and too few apologies. Come on, guys, this is not rocket science. Good thing we were patient, peace-loving, non-line-jumping Canadians.
5. The importance to treating everyone equally: In a crisis situation, you can’t play favourites. This is a Titanic lesson. What appeared to be blatantly sacrificing the Winnipeg passengers for the Toronto ones was inexcusable. And taking the business class and frequent-flyer passengers first after everyone had been waiting an hour in unbearable heat (which they tried to do, and then thought better of) was just dumb.
6. The value of service recovery: When you mess up, bend over backwards to recover the lost goodwill. Giving passengers compensation would have repaid itself many times over in repeat business, which Air Canada will now not get from many of these passengers.

Small is beautiful. From big computer makers to big airlines to big media to big pharma to big agribusiness, bigger is worse — for the economy, for the environment, and for the customer. When will we learn?