Speaking of roast beef... on my last PORTER flight I got a roast-beef sandwich with a glass of wine and I paid $59 each way!!

It's never happened? EVER? So they say, you think they're going to say otherwise?

 

its what is happening under my eyes.

Andrew, somehow it would be nice to be able to upgrade on these flights. Do like United give us 500 mile upgrade certificates or some type of regional upgrade certs. Just 2 SSWU are not enough for most elites let alone 4 for SE's

 

Please, does anyone know what happend to this AC desk?

 

I've been flying in the front seats of these things for 35 years and totally concur. Andrew is 100% correct.
Also Andrew why have we never used "Rocky Mountain Rapidair" as a tagline out west.

 

Most of the replies suggest "become more like porter".

Every day I see the Porter shuttle bus near the downtown Fairmont. Also hard to miss and also stopping at the hotel is the yellow-coloured Airport Express coach that runs every 20min. The bus appears to offer Wi-Fi too.


Here's a radical idea: offer a free Rapidair shuttle 'luxury' coach for moving downtown people to/from YYZ airport.

Or would this simply highlight the fact of the porter bus taking only 10min to reach YTZ, vs. 40+ min to YYZ...?

If there is Wi-Fi on the bus it would be a plus. Of course some people would always prefer cab/limo to YYZ esp. if their workplace is paying for it and time is important.

Tough call but I was thinking along the lines of: If you can't beat 'em then join 'em.

 

"They" ?!

How much time have you spent in an Air Canada flight control and planning centre?

Simon

 

I don't disagree with you, however, I did simply want to point out that the benefit of Rapidair is greatly reduced when a plane scheduled for YOW-YYZ is taken and used for YOW-YEG while forcing a plane full of pax to sit around waiting for another 1+ hours for the plane that was originally scheduled to fly YOW-YEG arrives (not sure where it was coming in from). The weather that day was horrendous (it was sometime in Jan or Feb) and I have no idea how late the YOW-YEG flight was by the time they finally sent it on it's way, but it is frustrating to see it happen. (I can likely find the exact day this occured if you don't believe me.)

That was also why I suggested trying to make the rapidair flights more dedicated as much as possible ... to try and reduce downline effects. I fly YOW-YYZ almost every week, and I do tend to stick with AC because most of these flights are coming in from Toronto and doing a quick turn. The flights rarely depart as scheduled, but usually depart within 5-15 mins of scheduled (Porter is almost always right on time if not a few minutes early). However, when the weather turns for the worse, I know that AC is going to get out. (Westjet and Porter tend to have way more red per flight on the Ottawa departure boards then AC ever does.)

 

Well take a look at this "new thread? not sure why it was not posted in this thread but Porters "on-time" performance is BAD..

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-c...l#post11827033

 

I didn't want AY's Rapidair question and FTers' replies to get bogged down in a debate about PD OTP. My bad if this was wrong thing to do.

 

Well when the airport is fogged in that's what happens. DELAYS. Downtown T.O. experienced major fog yesterday and heavy rain at times.

But at-least pax get free use of the lounge while they are waiting in Toronto.

 

Never have never will, I'll leave that to the experts over at AC. I mean they are a hair away from another bankruptcy filing.

I repeat what I said before, from a pax perspective that's the way it seems.

 

Only if the pax is completely ignorant.

The OP was looking for informed suggestions. I'm sure they are well aware of the many stupid things people think they know about airlines.

 

This sounds like a "don't inconvenience me to avoid inconveniencing to someone else" argument. Not sure that will really apply in this thread. At times they'll have to make a decision and that's the way it goes. United once had me on an 8 hour mechanical delay to Beijing on a 3-day trip. That's one full day lost. Makes an hour or two delay on a short-haul look quite tolerable. It could be worse, you could be stuck on the 401 + DVP in stop-and-go.

 

My bet is most "pax" don't spend time thinking about such things, unless they are of a conspiratorial bent.

I guess it would be better to have 50 ready to go, crew-filled planes just sitting around on the ground in case one goes mechanical to ensure that armchair airline experts don't walk around the departure lounge talking about how airline X would never cancel a flight because of low loads, whereas it's an AC specialty, just in case this happened to happen.

 

I can't fault them for the decision ... and I was in the lounge so I couldn't complain all that much. It probably did make the most sense at the time... but if the idea of rapidair is to have hourly or better service on a 1-hour flight, sending rapidair planes to other destinations while passengers sit around wondering why their flight keeps getting delayed does take away from the rapidair experience (the passangers at the gate had no idea what was happening).

I didn't mean for the post to come across as a complaint, but more something to consider if you're trying to build (or rebuild) a rapidair brand.