Air Canada Tips

Booking Tickets

On the website the Air Canada booking system is fairly intuitive, however it is long and slow when on dialup. When you book your tickets, you can see the seats available when selecting a flight. This is very useful if you want to ensure you get a window seat, or if you want to see if a plane has been XMed.

You can also book seats online - so long as you pay extra per flight. The seat booking on the website is notoriously suspect. You may have paid extra to book seats in advance, but the website will often refuse to take the reservation, once it has your money. Accordingly you may be better off saving your money, and then just calling up Air Canada to reserve seats.

Most cheap economy tickets are non-refundable and non-transferable, however you can often make a change to flight time or day, which, oddly, halves in price on the day of departure. This can be a lot cheaper than a flexible ticket.

Be warned that when you make an Ebooking booking and enter any other FF number than an Air Canada number, often the booking will default back to an Air Canada FF number. Check your boarding card to make sure it has been correctly entered.

Operational Upgrades

One of the common questions is "How do I get an upgrade on Air Canada to Business or Club class?". Alas, getting upgraded to business class on Air Canada really isn't that easy. The airline has the Western, rather than American, model for upgrades longhaul. Which is to say you'll only get an upgrade if your paid for class is full, and then upgrades are processed accordingly to a pecking order of elite frequent flyer status. You are very unlikely to ever get an upgrade unless you are at least a Gold Star Alliance member.

Air Canada 767 at Toronto, bound for London LHR

To start with, make sure you are a frequent flyer, and you do fly frequently: after all, if Air Canada are going to upgrade anyone, they will upgrade those passengers who fly with them pretty regularly, and hence will enjoy the upgrade enough to put more business Canada's way. Then if the flight is full in economy, and someone needs to be moved up, the check in staff will first look at Aeroplane SuperElite members, and then Aeroplane Elite level, and then at other Star Alliance members at the equivalent levels (Gold, then Silver).

Another thing that Canada look at is how much you paid for your ticket: it's much more likely to happen with a full fare ticket (although occasionally you can get lucky with a discounted economy ticket). On Canada the airline has heard - probably hundreds of times a day - requests for an upgrade: the general consensus seems to be that if you ask for an upgrade, you're much more likely to get it: there are no points to be gained by being shy. Although opinions differ on an upgrade strategy for Air Canada.

As always, my advice on dressing properly in the pages on how to get an upgrade applies.

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Air Canada Tips
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