"Day 1 of my Trip to Las Vegas"

Here's a special report from Randy, who's going to Las Vegas for vacation, the trip where Air Canada tripled the ticket price in less than 8 hours and caused me not to go with them. Here's his story...

Here I am at home on Day 2 of my trip. YES at HOME. Here’s how it goes:

Our Direct flight to LV was canceled 3 days ago so we got a connecting flight to Toronto from 6pm-7:15pm and then 8:40pm till 1:30am in LV.

Of course the plane is late and they tell us every 10 minutes that we will board soon. Finally…we start boarding and halfway through right after Peter gets through they stop the boarding. And now the boarding stops for about an hour. They don’t stop the boarding halfway for an hour unless something was wrong.

So while I’m outside waiting, they don’t tell us what is wrong, only that “we will board as soon as they give us the ok”. We then see someone who looks like the pilot who leaves the plane, yet they still don’t tell us what is going on and they postpone the flight till 6:10, then 6:30 and then 7:00pm. It is obvious to me that this plane isn’t going to fly anytime soon, its just like in the metro when they say that service will be back in ten minutes which ends up being 3 hours.

We stand in line till about 7:30pm and they tell us that the flight is taking off at 9:45pm. Anyone with a connecting flight was told to rebook for the next day. So now if anyone has any spirits of ghosts in the LV area, feel free to send them to our rooms at the Stratosphere because its already paid for and Air Canada cares as much as my 5 year old cousin killing ants with a fly swatter.

So we ask this AC lady where to go to rebook and she sends us to a wrong counter…which we learn after wasting 15-20 mins there and the lady at that counter screams at us for wasting other peoples’ time. Then we get to the real counter and now there is a huge lineup. Like at least 30 people in line and there are 3 AC people at the counter. Each person takes like 5-10 minutes because AC Canada workers are unionized and like to take as much time as possible to maximize the ease of their great jobs. At one point only one clerk was taking people to rebook…ONE. One worker was on the phone probably ordering take out and two other people were pretending to do something on the computer and not taking anyone…probably a solid game of minesweeper no doubt.

So Peter is calling his brother at home and is looking for alternative routes to LV. Unfortunately, from Montreal, there are no good choices. Its 8:07pm and there is a bus to NYC in which we can fly from there to LV.

Ah what the hell, let’s pull a little “Amazing Race” so we run to a cab and burn it to the bus station. Once we get there, the line up is about 20 people and it’s 8:45pm. The lady sells us the tickets and says there should be room. But of course when we get to the gate, the bus is full and next bus is at 10:30pm which would make us miss the flight to LV, unless we upgrade to another flight. So we call Air Canada and the best they could do is to arrive in LV the next day…today at 4pm but taking THREE planes. So from a direct flight, to a one connecting flight to this. At this point, I think it would be bet to go home and fly tomorrow, the hotel that we paid for is a sunk cost. Pete really wants to bus to NYC, because he is a gambler and wants to play like mad. He even goes to the casino in Montreal before work at 4am so you get the idea. I don’t like the idea of paying 200$ more and spending 8h on a bus so I decided to go home.

Today MONDAY, we have the exact same flight as yesterday, a connecting flight to Toronto from 6pm-7:15pm and then 8:40pm till 1:30am in LV. It was funny since we initially had the 5pm departure from MTL to TO and Pete changed it to the 6pm one and we got screwed. So, this is how my vacation is going so far!!!!!!!!!

TBC

It could be worse, I could have been with them ;)