Daily Archives: Saturday, 13 August, 2005

The small Bombardier aircraft I fly from Toronto to Montréal is made in Québec. It’s definitely no business-class, I have hardly room for my head, and I’m by no means a tall person by Dutch standards.

I have a window seat and since the plane is flying over our house during the landing I can snap some shots. They are not very sharp because the sun is almost set, but the red circle indicates our house. To the left is the little park in which Poupoune loves to fetch ball, and in the back you can see the high-rises of downtown Montréal. The green area in the top right is ‘the Mountain’.

Just one day before I’m about to fly home a strike of the caterers and baggage handlers of British Airways in Heathrow grounded 100s of planes and stranded 70,000 passengers. Since I’m flying British Airways (yes, again) over Heathrow I’m fucked. But because I read the Internets I find out about this strike quite early. I call up BA in the Netherlands (only a 10 minutes wait) and they advise me to avoid Heathrow and try to book a seat on another airline. They promise they will reimburse my single ticket. I don’t like this very much since I had planned to spend a day in London by taking the first flight in the morning on Saturday. I also have to cancel a meeting with a Londoner I met on a mailing list. But since I don’t have very good experiences with Heathrow lately, to put it mildly, and don’t want to spend a night on a chair in a crowded airport I decide to follow their advice.

I immediately try the website of Dutch national pride KLM, but they only have business class tickets available for 2500 euro (3680 CAD) for a single to Montréal!
I try Air Canada but they also have only business class available on Saturday and Sunday. And I’ve already said good-bye to all my friends and don’t want to stay any longer in the Netherlands. I’m kind of looking forward to coming home.

But when I reload my browser I see they suddenly have one Air Canada Club Class seat available for not too much money, ‘only’ 1100 CAD. I immediately book that flight, only to find out later that this Air Canada Club Class is almost as luxurious as business class.

Granted, we don’t get any whiskeys in real glasses and the cutlery is still plastic, but the seats are widely spaced and have more legroom than I need. Too bad it’s a day flight and I don’t have to sleep. Because I could sleep very well in this seat.

My flight is over Toronto and I have a layover of two hours. So I eat and drink something in the Air Canada Maple Leaf business lounge and enjoy their free Wifi access and a nice lemon sherbet.

Now I only hope British Airways will indeed reimburse my ticket, even though it’s not and Economic ticket, otherwise this will be a very expensive trip.