When will they learn?

To be fair, there was a big snowstorm in Boston. Snow causes delays — especially for smaller planes on short-haul routes. I get that.

What rankles, though, is the way this delay was handled by Air Canada and the many system failures, manifest incompetencies, and lack of accountability that I saw at every stage of the journey.

The flight was scheduled to leave at 1:35 pm. During the afternoon and evening, we received minimal information on flight status. We were boarded and deplaned twice until the flight was finally cancelled nine hours later.

The second boarding was a joke… it was around 8:30 pm when we were hustled onto the plane. We were told that a short letup in the storm was anticipated in the next 30 minutes and the crew was trying to catch the window. We then sat on the tarmac for an hour and a half because the loading ramp was jammed. The snow never let up.

As we deplaned, the cabin crew apologized and (love this!) disavowed responsibility for the decision to board us in the first place.

The lineup to rebook took a ridiculous amount of time. Why can’t this process be simplified? Or, if you know you’re going to have to cancel flights because of very obvious snowstorms — hello! — put extra staff on the job and open a couple of additional ticketing stations so that passenger inconvenience is reduced a little.

Down in the baggage hall, ten passengers, including me, were hanging in limbo because their baggage had not come off the plane. Two baggage agents were chatting merrily to each other and basically ignoring passengers asking for information. They stated repeatedly that this was not their problem — that they couldn’t understand why the turkeys outside were not bringing the baggage in. Once again, lots of blame-shifting going on here.

The other passengers’ baggage eventually arrived; mine did not. I had to get forceful with the baggage agents in order to get them to make the appropriate phone call, which produced the information that my bag had been put on the wrong flight. So, I spent a very inconvenient night in an airport hotel with neither a toothbrush nor change of clothes. Nobody apologized to me for this one.

Next morning the snow has cleared. The plane is at the gate. Should leave on time, right? Nope. We’re 90 minutes late getting on board, and then the plane has to be towed back to the gate because the nosewheel is stuck.

And then, on landing, the terminal dock is stuck again and we sit for 15 minutes waiting for ground crew to fix it.

At all these failure points (except for the baggage loss) Air Canada staff apologized to us in cheery voices. On my way out of the plane I looked the pilot and purser in the eye, and told them at, after a certain number of failures, apologies do no good whatsoever. The cabin crew once again told me that it was not their decision to re-board us the previous night.

Finally, when I took my lost baggage tag to the agent he spent 10 minutes fumbling around trying to locate my bag. Eventually a supervisor had to intervene.

I believe this airline is broken. The people may be trying hard, but the systems supporting them don’t work. Bad service decisions are being made. The high number of small mechanical failures I saw on this trip makes me wonder about overall safety. And most importantly, people are pointing fingers, blaming others, and generally ducking responsibility when things go wrong.

I am copying this message to my company’s corporate travel department, with a request that they switch my airline preference to WestJet.