Have experienced the same thing countless times with Air Canada. If I had (or heard of) a better offer from a competitor, I would be gone without question. They do nothing to make me feel special. My favorite experience was a reward ticket from Vancouver to New Orleans (pre-hurricane). There were so few options, I was forced to leave Vancouver on a red-eye to Toronto, arrive in the wee hours of the morning only to have to re-check my luggage and go through customs, fly to Chicago, sit for another couple hours and then fly to New Orleans. I needed what was left of my arrival day to nap and recover. What a waste. The trip home was simply through Denver - it was so speedy I felt like I was beamed home via transporter in comparison to the trip down.

They make me feel guilty just for flying with them, period. The flight attendants remind me of those teachers when I was like seven who hated kids. Given that WestJet has done such an amazing job with their customer-centred service, I can't believe how far behind Air Canada still is.

My Air Canada experiences have been pretty good for some years now. That was often not the case earlier. So although I haven't yet flown WestJet or JetBlue etc. to gain a new benchmark, it seems to me that at least Air Canada has improved. A lot. I doubt though that customer service will ever be their strong point. For one thing, they're unionized and it's all about seniority.

I go out of my way to ensure that I don't fly with AirCanada. This little government aided monopoly does not deserve any of my money. I will fly WestJet whenever possible, when flying to a Canadian destination. When flying to a non-Canuck destination, I will usually fly out of Seattle. Not only does this allow me to avoid AirCanada, but it also saves me hundreds of dollars, and more than makes up for the gas to/from Seattle, and the parking fees. For whatever reason, there seems to be an invisible Canadian Air Tax that adds anywhere from 20% to >100% to any flight. I suspect it is a gov't imposed "Keep AirCanada Going" tax, but I could be wrong.

To tell the truth, I've had the opposite experience. I didn't realize at the time that it could be because I was a frequent flyer, but perhaps that was it.

My personal theory about Bird Canada is that the service you get from any individual depends on whether they are originally from Air Canada or from Canadian. Thank your lucky stars if you get one of the Wardair originals!

Renegourley is correct. I've been running an informal survery for the past year. Every time I receive outstanding service from Air Canada, I ask the employee "did you formerly work for Canadian Airlines?" So far 100% have said "yes".

I dont get this post. You get a free ticket but you still complain that you didnt get a cookie?

You can usually set apart people who get upgrades. They want cookies, hot towels, wet naps, and if their rice was missing 5 grains, they would go and complain about it on sutori lol.