Home! The disappointing flight home wth Air Canada!

Mary and I arrived home yesterday after a long journey home.  Mine was a bit longer, of course, because I had to head to Victoria from Toronto (2 extra flights!)  It is nice to be home.  It's a bit colder here and I have to wear many more layers of clothing (and socks!) but it's good to se my cats and sleep in my bed.

We were upgraded to Executive Class with Air Canada again for our flight from Buenos Aires to Santiago and then from Santiago to Toronto.  We were really excited because our flights out were so great!  The service was fantastic, the food was good, we were able to sleep and it was the first time Mary had experienced it.

It was all very different on the way home...

The first flight from BA to Santiago was only 2 hours, but the crew was very snippy and rude to everyone.  We figured that they must be very tired and hoped that there would be a crew change in Chile.  There was a crew change!  We really hoped that this would be a good thing.  It wasn't...

Immediately, we could see that things were only going to be worse.  We were barely welcomed onto the plane when they were snippy with us because none of us had received our headset ear covers or our Air Canada packages with eye masks, earplugs etc.  For some reason, this made them angry at us?  Interesting...

Then one of the male flight attendants came to take our dinner orders.  I mentioned to Mary that I wanted the fish this time.  I heard him tell the man in front of me that they were already out of fish.  So I said - "I heard that you are already out of fish, is that right?  Too bad."  He got so defensive immediately and went on about how he is not responsible for the number of fish dishes and allotment they get etc etc.  Totally surprising and unprofessional - to say the least.  Mary decided to try to lighten the mood and said. "Who ate all the fish?" with a huge friendly smile on her face.  He launched into his defensive monlogue again.  So Mary said, "They only give you 8 servings?" - trying to give him a scapegoat - somewhere he could focus his anger, because it certainly shouldn't have been at us!  Who the hell gets angry about this anyway?  It's a simple routine question that you are going to get from people as an airline flight attendant in Executive Class when you hand them a menu and ask them to choose. 
Anyway, he turned away and started taking someone else's order.

So Mary said to me, "I guess I have lost my charm."  We were both just trying to lighten the mood and to make him feel better and to let him know that we were on his side.  So I said to her, "No, you haven't at all - he just has no sense of humour."  He turns to me and says, "Is there a problem here?"  and I said "No." Then he said, "I have the sense that you're talking about me."  Then I said, "No, you just seem upset."  So he said, "I just don't appreciate you talking about me.  Do we have a problem here because if we do, we are still at the gate..?"

We could not believe it!  He was actually threatening to kick us off the plane.  Because I said to Mary that he did not have a sense of humour,  Because he was a rude and unprofessional asshole to us from the moment we stepped on the plane.  As if he has the power to mkae that decision!  I actually also saw him telling the rest of the front end crew about it.  Other passengers around us started commenting on how awful Air Canada and their service has become again after a few years of good service.  It sure seems that way! 

Nice start to a 10+ hour long flight!

I talked to the Head flight crew attendant about it and she was nice, but not very helpful or professional about it.  She was overly nice to Mary and I - in that syrupy, uncomfortable way - but not one other crew member ever talked to us.  For 10 hours!  She said that I should just chalk it up to a full moon.  Nice.  Very professional.

It wasn't the best experience, for sure, but at least we were comfortable, could sleep and had food.  It was still much better than being in Economy for that long.

I am Elite with Air Canada and even with all of that travelling I do, I have rarely had a bad experience so I was very surprised. Maybe all of the Air Canada haters and critics are right?  Maybe I have just been lucky in the past?

All that really matters, I guess, is that we are home safe and sound.