I decided to book Air Canada business class to Paris via Toronto. That’s exactly what the airline wants, and is a key component of their strategy – growing their “sixth freedom” business, or transporting between from one country to another via Canada. They’re well-positioned to serve Americans in the transatlantic market.
- Air Canada serves more U.S. destinations than any other non-U.S. airline
- From most U.S. cities you’re going to need to fly at least one-stop to most of Europe
- So that stop can be in Chicago, Atlanta, New York or Dallas, or (in their view) just as easily in Toronto or Montreal or even Ottawa.
- And the same holds for flights across the Pacific via Vancouver.
In my case, I found that mileage tickets were available – at a premium, but still better than what other programs were offering on the day I needed to travel – and I was able to get four seats.
Furthermore, traveling also with a lap infant, I wanted to break up the flight as much as possible and Toronto – Paris is a fairly short route (spoiler: he was fine on the flight, and also on our longer Air France return).
And breaking up the trip seemed great – a night in Toronto and we’d have the full next day for activities with the kids before continuing on. That meant we’d begin with a simple Austin – Toronto flight, on an Airbus A320.
Check-in was a breeze, though the Austin airport is a mess these days. Eventually there’ll be a new much larger check-in area. Eventually there’ll be enough security checkpoints (we’ll see if they get staffed!). But in the meantime the facilities aren’t large enough for passenger volume, and checkpoints are squeezed due to the construction.
There’s a single security checkpoint with TSA PreCheck and CLEAR. Both lines were long – and taking the same amount of time – but we were through in around 20 minutes.
We headed to the small United Club. Air Canada transborder business class provides access. At around 10:30 a.m. on a Friday the place was absolutely packed. We found two seats for four of us near the entrance, and I got a small snack for my daughter and tasted a couple of things myself.
In general United Clubs offer food that’s a bit better than what you’ll find at American Airlines Admirals Clubs (and far more than what you’ll find at the American club in Austin directly next door) but nothing close to Delta spreads. The chicken salad wrap wasn’t bad. Then decided just to head back into the terminal.
Our inbound aircraft was delayed, though it seemed to take far longer than necessary or normal to unload the previous aircraft and turn it back around for our flight. And once they did that, we were further delayed for no obvious reason at all other than that it’s Air Canada which underperforms all U.S. airlines in on-time operations. Add in that they’re serviced by Menzies in Austin – that’s the contract operator you pick when your goal is cost savings over quality – and a short delay is to be expected.
The Air Canada narrowbody business class product is about what you’d expect, but with large seatback entertainment screens and foot bars. (The foot bar at my wife’s seat was broken and wouldn’t descend.)
Since this was effectively a three-hour domestic first class flight, just crossing a border, I won’t go into tremendous detail. This flight is mostly just setting the stage. However they do have a tail camera which is great for the avgeek in me.
I settled in for the flight and got some work done on the wifi, which was perfectly serviceable, and I ran a couple of episodes of Friday Night Lights on in the background. It had been years since I’ve watched it and I really did enjoy that show. And boy the intro theme music for it is just so good.
A beverage of choice was served with nuts, natch.
I had pre-ordered the chicken and it was fine. I thought it was a slight notch above what I generally get on American or Delta.
On arrival in Toronto there was really no immigration queue to speak of, bags came out quickly, and we were on our way.
We spent the night downtown at the Hyatt Regency, which was perfectly fine for our stay. They even accommodated us with a requested 5 p.m. late check-out (as a Hyatt Globalist I was only guaranteed 4 p.m.). Staff were friendly, complimentary elite breakfast was reasonably good, and they were happy to provide me with as many complimentary bottles of water as I wished.
Stopping for a night on a simple trip from Austin to Paris can seem like a waste, but it really wasn’t. The kids enjoyed their day very much. My daughter even wants to return. There’s extra effort in schlepping bags to and from the airport, for sure, but we organized the trip to not push a baby beyond what we were sure he could handle.
My daughter was an amazing traveler. She had no problem doing several Europe trips and French Polynesia in her first 15 months, plus long haul flights like Dallas – Sydney. No one even noticed she was there. My son is.. a baby. So we use all of the things we know to make sure he’s happy and quiet for the flight. And he was – both segments!
Based on recent news I thought AC stopped flying to the U.S. out of spite. And any U.S. tourists visiting Canada would be pelted with dirty ice. Good to know the news was wrong.
I like flying Air Canada from (or connect from) U.S. cities with Maple Leaf lounges as business/first class tickets have access to these lounges. Thanks for being good travel parents.
Glad you enjoyed a stopover in Toronto, my birthplace. It’s quite simple, if not travelling with much luggage or kids, because there’s an inexpensive train from the airport to downtown, running every 15 minutes at least some times of the day. Air Canada has been working on selling these US-YYZ-Europe/Asia flights hard in past years, sometimes even making the cash tickets cheaper than the tickets starting at YYZ!
@JetAway, most Canadians understand the difference between the people of the United States and its government. The latter is imposing tariffs on Canadian goods, but the former is just an innocent bystander.
“I found that mileage tickets were available – at a premium, but still better than what other programs were offering on the day I needed to travel”
Just curious. What type of premium are you talking about? 100k or 500k?
@JetAway… Come on. Canadians like Americans, always have, and likely always will. We do despise that government half your country elected though. That is where Canadians loathing is directed, eh.
Yeah not sure for me it would be worth the premium to stop in Canada even if flying business vs taking the non stop in premium economy or economy.
Also curious about the mileage price of tickets and whether it was post devaluation.
I have 120 k aeroplan miles from a cancelled trip for two YUZl-LAX on a flat bed and they aren’t running flatbeds in the route anymore.
Bad routing. Canadians are very hateful For decades, their TV news have taken swipes at America. Americans have been unaware they are hated.
Even their money is crazy / loonie. It’s also plastic, not paper, which is not biodegradable and harmful to the planet.
Canadians are a savage people
@Nick – there’s no Austin – Paris non-stop, so I have to connect somewhere
@Beachfan @Tony I paid double miles for business class transatlantic (~ 120k pp)
Thanks! 480k for the four of you one way, including the 60k for the lounge?
I have been to Toronto quite a few times. Once was for my high school senior class trip (Yonge Street was interesting.) I used to fly there from LAX and rent a car to drive into Western New York when the flights were much cheaper and the rental was cheaper. On a clear day we could see the tall buildings in Toronto from across the road from where I grew up. I have been in the CN Tower several times.
Yawn.
AC is fine when things go as planned. When things go wrong AC has a unique habit of making things far more complicated and worse than they should be. The issue is the leadership (poor) and employees, who have been screwed over by prior bankrupted and lost their pensions twice. The old timers hate the company, the job and most of all, the passengers
Lucky you did not have to do a positioning flight. 20 minutes is ridiculous for Clear Precheck thankfully I don’t fly to Austin.
I’ve heard a lot of horrible things about Air Canada from Canadians so I fear it
The idea the food in United is not as good as Delta shows how awful clubs are these days. The Delta Club in Atlanta I was just in actually two of them remain at the level of holiday inn buffet. I can’t believe people pay to get in these things
Mileage blogger malpractice to not state how this was ticketed and paid for. What miles? How do we get a stopover in YYZ? By phone? Why do you think we read your blog? For vibes?
@Kal – I thought I was clearer, Aeroplan miles, as I noted I paid double the saver rate when nothing else was available and dates of travel were fixed. Booked on the Aeroplan website.
For reference, I’ve been looking at AUS-ZRH and have found 70k AC points for AUS-YUL in eco and YUL-ZRH in biz to be pretty common. When trying out the YUL stopover option (for a 4 days), I was getting the same options, but at 95k AC points… So about 25k extra points for the stopover in Montreal.
As to the Comments:
1. Yeah, I’ve got concerns about the customer service at AC when things go bad, they don’t have a good history of taking care of their customers during down times.
2. What is up with the crazy [derek] anti-Canada posts (which are out-right lies)? Are there always political nuts posting in the comments? (I usually don’t read them.)
We as Canadians in general don’t despise Americans, but DO dedpise your elected government (and after all Trump’s screaming about false voting & ‘stolen elections’, I personally wonder exactly how he knows so much about the subject, except fom experience. Did he actually win, or steal and cheat and fraud his way in). It can be difficult not to disdain the ignorance of those that put him in, but things will never improve & we’d only alienate one another by being cruel to y’all.
Derek should be thrown off this site. This is not what we visit here for. Thank you for an interesting and objective review.
It seems Derek is off his meds. Clearly a dissociative schizophrenic with the crazy stuff he is spouting.