Saturday 18th April
Well for anyone wanting to travel Air Canada, newsflash - don't expect that because you have purchased a ticket gives you an automatic right to a seat on that flight, to get that apparently you have to pay extra for the actual seat! Arrived at Quebec airport, booked in for flight to Montreal and through to Vancouver, no problems with first leg, on one of the friggest tiniest planes I've ever traveled in. 40 mins of flying in a sardine tin, that's about the size of it! The guy at Quebec said, oh it appears the flight to Vancouver is overbooked by 5 people. We said (very confidentially being the seasoned travellers that we are) oh not us, we booked months ago" he says" doesn't matter when you've booked, you're not guaranteed seat but I will put this ticket on your boarding pass and you go straight to the gate when you arrive and they will allocate you a seat." Well we did our part! Did they do theirs? NO! Get to gate 1 and the lady goes " sorry this flight is over booked by 5 people and we are looking for volunteers to travel on next flight at 550pm" some 5(must be the magical number here) hours later. I said " oh no sorry not us, the guy at Quebec said we would be on flight and we booked months ago." She says" but you didn't reserve your seat" I said " excuse me, we booked our flights and paid for them, is that not an automatic seat reservation?" She says " no you need to pay extra to book a seat, you won't be on this flight as it is fully booked, but you will be compensated and we will now reserve seat for you on next flight at 550pm" consequently we were on that flight and got into Vancouver at 8pm instead of 4pm, were given seats in middle of plane so couldn't see anything at all. I managed to crane my neck, by almost doing an exorcist twist and saw some snow covered mountains just as were we coming in! So- not the best day so far! Especially after having had a wonderful time to this point with everything going so smoothly! Anyway we learnt a great amount about Quebec and Montreal airports and also international travel, apparently this is how it is all over the world! I did politely tell the person who told us this, that it doesn't actually happen in Australia, when you book a flight there, you are also booking a seat! Live and learn. Here in Vancouver for today and then leave in morning for Kelowna and Big White. No photos to this blog, didn't get out of the airports all day!