It had been a few weeks since I had a really good cause to hate Air Canada. And since I will be flying with them on Friday, I was obviously concerned. I figured for certain that meant something horrific was going to happen with the flight.
And something may well happen, but Air Canada has, in the meantime, offered up something else for me to grumble about. Some of you may recall how annoyed I was that the airline was going to stop allowing pets to be carried on the plane. This was going to prove to be a nuisance not only to me, but to many Canadians who happen to be pet owners.
So once again the Air Canada has stepped up and found another way to make things inconvenient by reducing the amount of points they offer on Tango flights. It’s a way of reducing costs although their reasoning is absolutely nonsensical to me.
As might be expected, people are deeply in love with Air Canada's latest brilliant business decision. Not that I expect them to pay attention or anything.
The plan myself and Cathy have is this. We are currently locked into Air Canada and Aeroplan because of the amount of miles we have. However, as we plan on burning off most of those miles on a pair of first class tickets to Australia in 2009 we feel that will be as good a time as any to get out of both Air Canada and Aeroplan.
We’ll switch credit cards to one that awards miles, but we can use them with any airline we want. We’ll fly Air Canada as little as humanly possible. And when we do fly internationally, as we did last year to San Francisco, we’ll try and fly on Air Canada partner airlines rather than the mothership itself.
Banning pets from travelling was the final straw. Cutting the points – not to mention the time limits they put on their usage earlier – is just a bit more salt in the wound.
4 comments:
My new favourite thing with AIR CANADA is that they charge you a fee if you would like to talk to a human when dealing with their Customer Service. Shouldn't that be free of charge, especially if you are a Customer? I hate them so much it makes my face red thinking about them. I have too many horrible stories, and it sounds like everyone else does too! How are they still in business?
Tell me more about airmiles with a company/benefit plan that will allow you/one to accumulate airmiles and use them on any airline.
I just spent 200K Areoplan miles on two first class tickets to New Zealand for this October for myself and my partner.
I am all ears.
Indigo
I think RBC offers a credit card called Avion that consumer affairs people have found to be the best bet for air miles...no black out periods and (I think) whatever airline you want.
As a side, the only airline I've come across that's more evil that Air Canada is Iberia. They laughed at Himself and avoided answering a simple question: "Are we actually going to get on a plane today?" Yeah, we didn't. And they thought we'd stay in the airport transit room (we were connecting) for all that time. Himself is remarkable at complaining though, and he got them to put us up in a hotel for the night.
M.
Avion is the card, although I do have to do more research into it. You do require more points to get places, but at least you can then not use Air Canada, which is becoming a real lure for me.
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