Table Of Contents
I’m glad that the Air Canada flight attendants got a deal that they seem to be satisfied with (maybe?), even if it caused me some inconvenience. Here is my story.
Setting
In mid-July I finally got around to buying my next flights between Aotearoa and Canada. MP was flying back on Thursday, August 14, and the Beaver Valley Climbing Festival would be on the weekend of August 15-17, so I could just stay a bit longer and attend the festival.
- Original booking: Monday August 18
AC127, YYZ-YVR, dep 1930 arr 2134 (Flex K)
AC035, YVR-BNE, dep 2320 arr 0705 +2 (Flex K)
AC6112 operated by Air NZ, BNE-WLG, dep 0915 +2 arr 1445 +2 (Economy K)
I knew that there were negotiations between the union (CUPE) and Air Canada even in July, but these things are always unpredictable.
As my planned travel date approached, I continued to follow news about the potential strike. First, there was a strike vote with a 99.7% mandate. Then there was a potential date for a strike, August 16. Fortunately, that was after MP’s travel date. I would not be so lucky.
I drove from Montréal to Waterloo on the Thursday. The early start did help beat the heat, though after a breakfast break in Napanee (so many Canadian flags) it did get a bit hotter.
On the radio they were interviewing a labour relations expert who was saying that the possibility of a strike in his head had shifted from 50/50 earlier in the week to about 90% as of Thursday.
On Friday I did all the errands in Waterloo, and then my student Vinayak and I did the final revisions on our SCAM paper until 3am Saturday.
Air Canada’s change policy at that point was not useful to me, as it did not cover my flight. Late in the day on Friday, Air Canada did institute a policy where I could change my flight to another Air Canada flight after September 23rd.
When I finally went to bed, the flight attendants indeed were on strike.
An uncertain weekend
Not very long after going to bed, I was up again and driving to Guelph to carpool to the Beaver Valley. Still didn’t know what would happen for Monday’s flight, and I couldn’t even change flights quite yet; except for the changes-to-after-September-23, one had to wait until one’s flight was actually cancelled before being eligible for changes.
I thought that the question was: who would blink first—the company or the union? As it turns out, that was the wrong question. Just like how MIT had won the Harvard-Yale game, here, the federal Minister for Jobs blinked first, and tried to make a back-to-work order coupled with binding arbitration, just 12 hours after the strike started. There was a line from a flight attendant about how there have been longer snowstorm interruptions.
On Saturday evening, I talked to someone who was to fly to Prague Sunday night for work. Would she? Who knows! I thought that given the back-to-work order on Saturday, it would be likely that Air Canada would be flying on Sunday.
Strike hits home
In yet another twist, though, the union rejected the back to work order, even though the Canadian Industrial Relations Board had a hearing on Sunday and declared the continuation of the strike unlawful on Monday.
Air Canada was delaying cancellations as long as possible, but it was clear that my Monday evening 7:30pm flight wouldn’t go. They were not selling tickets for Monday, they were not opening checkins 24h before (despite the app saying so), and the app showed the unusual number “Checked-in 0”. They cancelled some YYZ-YVR flights earlier in the day, but finally, they sent a cancellation for my flight at 10:33am.
Many flight changes
Now that I had a flight cancellation, I could go ahead and change my flight. I was on my way to Toronto on the GO Bus, where I would go climbing with Marco and Blake: I figured that I might as well get to Toronto since there was some chance that the flight would go. (With my luggage. It was heavy.)
The way it works is that you call Air Canada—fortunately, I could call the priority line for elites—and they call you back when it’s your turn. I called them as soon as I got the notification. Well, 10:36am. On the bus I was trying to work out some alternate plans. None of them worked.
I’d been aware of ExpertFlyer for a while, but had never had a subscription: although I fly a lot, my flight patterns don’t really justify it. They offer 5-day trial subscriptions, so I signed up for one of those. Probably I would signup again and pay if another strike happened when I was travelling. It does work well, though the UI isn’t awesome (it chokes on trailing spaces on airport codes), and the search for routings generally doesn’t return exotic routings. You wouldn’t usually want the exotic routing, but I did here.
Rebooking #1: out to Saturday
I was getting ready to climb at Rock Oasis when I got a callback at 12:18pm, or just under 2 hours after I called them. I had 39 minutes of quality time with the Air Canada agent, resulting in having a confirmed ticket on Saturday evening through Sydney, a 6 day delay. I was on my phone outside the climbing gym trying to look up alternatives, but that doesn’t work great. I was able to construct routings which the agent could validate, but I could not connect Toronto and Wellington.
The agent got a bit stressed about availability disappearing before her eyes. I was like “let’s try this last routing with Porter” (one seat available) but she was like “let’s just get you booked on the Saturday flight first”, and by the time we looked, the Porter seat was definitely not there.
Apparently the origin and destination had to be the same, though obviously the routing could change. There are trains (and buses) to various US cities, but that wouldn’t work. Montreal could conceivably work, under the VIA Rail reprotection agreement, but I never did manage to find something where the train was useful; Air Canada Jazz was still flying and so it was possible to fly to Montreal anyway.
- Call #1: Monday, called 10:36, callback 12:18, call length 39 minutes (in the hallway outside Rock Oasis)
- Rebooking #1: Sat Aug 23, similar to original:
AC33, YYZ-YVR, dep 1845 arr 2039 (Flex H)
AC33, YVR-SYD, dep 2240 arr 0720 +2 (Flex H)
AC6110 operated by Air NZ, SYD-WLG, dep 1845 +2; arr 00:05 +3 (Economy K) (Tuesday August 26)
Not my strongest climbing session. Maybe I was distracted. Got in a bunch of attempts on a cave climb, but couldn’t stick the last move.
Non-useful Pearson stop
After climbing, and delicious Caribbean food at the Gerrard Square mall, I made my way back to Waterloo, taking the UP Express to stop at the airport, just in case they could do anything.
There were two issues with Saturday. First, it was almost a week away. Second, it was on Air Canada, and who knows if they would be flying yet.
Airport staff could not help me: my rebooked flight, on Saturday, was too far in the future, so it was no longer under airport control. (The cancelled one would have been under airport control). I called Air Canada Reservations again and waited on hold while I was on the GO bus.
Rebooking #2: Through the US
The most obvious routings were connecting to Air New Zealand, for instance to NZ23, the YVR-AKL flight at 9pm. But, it turns out, there was actually no way to get to Vancouver earlier than Saturday. I tried to look for options, but at some points there were actually zero options. It was near impossible to leave Toronto.
Air New Zealand does operate from a bunch of US airports (SFO, LAX, IAH, JFK; also ORD, though currently on hiatus). Maybe I could use one of those. NZ1 is an 18 hour flight from New York to Auckland, and it had availability.
- Call #2: Monday, called 7:15pm, callback 8:18pm, call length 37 minutes
- Rebooking #2: Wed Aug 20:
AC7962, YTZ-YUL, dep 1225 arr 1343 (Flex Y)
AC8634, YUL-LGA, dep 0805 +1 arr 0932 +1 (Flex Y) (Thursday August 21)
NZ0001, JFK-AKL, dep 2155 +1 arr 0755 +3 (Economy M)
NZ413, AKL-WLG, dep 0900 +3 arr 1010 +3 (Economy M) (Saturday August 23)
This one was a bit of a doozy and had some issues, but it would, in principle, get me back to Wellington, and sooner than my previous booking. First strike: transitting via the US; I’d rather not. Second strike: arriving at LGA and flying out of JFK. Third strike: it was possible to get from Toronto to New York, but only through Montreal; I’d have to overnight in Montreal and leave for an 8am flight on Thursday. Still, I’d get back to Wellington by Saturday morning (+3 days from the Wednesday departure). At least I could arrange a proper bed in Montreal, even if I would have to leave it painfully early.
Later that evening, I saw another option through Asia, but decided that I would quit for the day while I was ahead.
Unproductive call / strategies for better flights
Overnight, there was a deal announced (which would go to the union for a vote), and the strike was over. Flights YYZ-YVR were still being cancelled on Tuesday; Air Canada announced resumption of flights on Tuesday evening. In principle it should be possible to fly to Vancouver on Tuesday evening and then on NZ23 to Auckland.
I tried a lot of things. Most of them didn’t work.
When I heard the news that the strike was over, I called Air Canada reservations at 10:30am. I was trying to self-book an alternate flight on the website, but that didn’t work at all. I missed the prompt for requesting a call back and stayed on the phone; there is no option to switch. 55 minutes later I accidentally hit the “hang up” / power button on my phone. That didn’t work. In any case, I didn’t see any availability for Vancouver.
- Call #3 (blooper): Tuesday, called 10:30am, hung up at 11:25am.
I decided to bring all my stuff to my office; it would be possible to take the GO bus from there to YYZ. This time, I took the local GRT bus.
Then I thought I’d try to see if the Air Canada checkin agent at YKF could help me. But I was in my office. I rented a Neuron scooter to get back to my house and then drove my car to the airport. Unfortunately, at YKF, they can only do something when there is IRROPS, and my flights were operating normally. Now I know.
- Call #4: Tuesday, called 11:30am, callback 2:30pm, 12m49
I actually hit the “decline call” button by accident when I got the callback, but they will just call you right back again, fortunately. At least once.
Unfortunately, when I did talk to the agent at 2:30pm Tuesday, there weren’t any options through Vancouver at all. When I was on the phone for that call, I didn’t think about the Asia options; they were all full the night before, but maybe they would have been available at that time. I had a list of routings through TPE, HKG, HND, and PKG, and was checking them regularly.
Through Vancouver
I walked home from the office with my baggage.
- Call #5: Tuesday 3:30pm, callback 6:01pm, 24m29
Well, let’s try again. This time, there was limited inventory on WestJet to Vancouver on Thursday, connecting to NZ23 YVR-AKL on Thursday. The agent agreed that this was a much better routing than the US routing. No US, no overnight.
- Rebooking #3: Thu Aug 21
WS4292, YYZ-YVR, dep 1030 arr 1244 (Y)
NZ0023, YVR-AKL, dep 2055 arr 0545 +1 (Full Economy Y)
NZ0409, AKl-WLG, dep 0800 +1 arr 0910 +1 (Full Economy Y) (Saturday, August 23)
The only issues were that it was still in 2 days’ time and also involved a first flight on WestJet, so no lounge access in Toronto, and I might have to pay for luggage (which I was assured would be reimbursed). Getting closer, though.
Probably optimal
Tuesday wasn’t going to happen, but maybe Wednesday could. I had suspected that there was a lot of YYZ-YVR inventory on Air Canada that they had zeroed out. The seat map is never authoritative as to flight loading, but in the Air Canada app, you can see how many seats are booked in premium cabins, and they weren’t full.
Later Tuesday evening, I spotted that the Wednesday YVR flights were wide open: they were selling revenue tickets.
- Call #6: Tuesday 7:30pm, 2h24m42s
I did not get offered the callback option on this call for some reason. I made damn sure to not hit the hangup button by accident. I might have dialed the general Air Canada Reservations number as a callback instead of the elite number.
- Final rebooking #4: Wed Aug 20
AC113, YYZ-YVR, dep 1300 arr 1507 (Flex Y)
NZ23, YVR-AKL, dep 2055 arr 0545 +2 (Full Economy Y)
NZ407, AKL-WLG, dep 0730 arr 0840 (Full Economy Y) (Friday, August 22)
It turns out, though, that even with YYZ-YVR wide open, getting from YVR to AKL was a challenge. Fortunately, there was 1 seat being sold on NZ23 when I was on the line, and I got that one. There were still empty seats on the plane. Probably weight limits. The Air Canada Australia flights were not operating on Wednesday, and indeed, the Maple Leaf Lounge was empty when I was there, since there were few other flights. There was just one guy flying to Malaysia or something.
The flights themselves were uneventful.
On the Toronto-Vancouver flight the FA making the announcements in English sounded happy to be back in the skies and said something like “On behalf of the 10,500 flight attendants I would like to personally thank you for your understanding during this disruption”. That was the only post-strike Air Canada flight I had on this trip.
In summary, I left Canada on Wednesday morning, had a nice visit to the park in Vancouver, and got to Wellington on Friday morning. This itinerary is probably the shortest possible; could have been shorter if I had left for Vancouver later, but there are fewer guarantees than usual about cancellations.
Usually I don’t take the Air New Zealand flight as I’m trying to get 1 million lifetime Air Canada miles, but because of the strike, I should be able to request Original Routing Credit.
