Air Canada Business Toronto Vancouver Review is part of the Bula! Fiji Hub Trip Report. This post is also part of the Melbourne & Bangkok Residencies.
After an afternoon of pho and phamily (see Pho Hung Toronto: Still Tops), I was comfortably asleep at the Hyatt Regency Toronto. Since my flight was at 6:45 AM, I set many alarms, concerned that I would miss my flight to Vancouver and subsequently miss my flight to Fiji which was departing at 11:05 PM. Due to flight availability (see Booking Miles & Smiles on Air Canada: Takes Calls, Emails, Luck) and my usual paranoia for making connections (see Cutting It Close: Will I Make My JFK-HKG Connection?), I was fine with a 14-hour layover in Vancouver (see Guns & Butter: Vancouver, Canada: Organic Edition).
I woke up to my alarm with no issue, only to come across this bad news:
Fortunately, Air Canada, as they wrote, “knows how stressful it can be when travel plans get interrupted.” (Sarcasm intended). What Air Canada should have said is that it is used to delays, and anyone who flies Air Canada should be as well (see Air Canada DTW to YYZ: Expensive in CAD, Expensive in Points). Fortunately, I was asleep when all of this happened and luckily the rebooking email was already in my inbox by the time I was awake. Otherwise, I would’ve been fixated on my phone, hitting refresh, all the while waiting for the confirmation email to come through.
Instead, I found myself stuck in the literally stale Air Canada Lounge in Toronto (see How Do You Mess up a Bagel?), waiting for my rescheduled flight to stop showing as delayed.
Ultimately, I did board my lie-flat comfort plane (see Worth It! Lie Flat Toronto to Vancouver on Air Canada), and ultimately I did make it to Vancouver at 10:30 AM, with 12 hours to spare.
Travel Lesson?
I keep a running tabulation of all my travel mistakes on my Travel Lessons page. Despite the delay, I still wouldn’t change this part of the itinerary. Not only did I have more than half of a day to make the connection, but also there was a flight from Toronto to Vancouver every hour. The bigger tragedy would have been if I went through the aforementioned trouble, had my flight cancelled, and was rebooked in coach.
