Hi friends, and thanks for stopping by to read about the horror of flying with Air Transat.
For those unaware of the airline, it’s a Canadian company with headquarters in Montreal, Quebec. Air Transat has flights from Toronto and Montreal to cities in Europe and the Caribbean. They partner with other airlines to offer flights within Canada and to worldwide destinations.
In other words, if you’re in Vancouver and made a booking through Air Transat to London, England, you would fly from Vancouver to Toronto with their partner, Porter Airlines. Then you would change planes to Air Transat for the flight to London.
By the way – don’t do that! Book non-stop flights as much as you can. Air Canada and British Airways offer non-stop flights to London and many other destinations in Europe.
April 12, 2024 – a bad day for me ðŸ˜
I was researching flights from London to Toronto and on April 12, 2024, I chose Air Transat.
Hindsight being 20/20 – boy did I fuck up!
Here are the reasons I chose Air Transat, even though I’d never flown with them before.
First, it was a non-stop flight.
Second, I liked the schedule. Depart London Gatwick at 12:40pm on September 1 and arriving in Toronto at 3:40pm.
Third, it was significantly lower in price than Air Canada.
On April 12, 2024, I booked the flight on Air Transat’s webpage with relatively no issues. I also paid extra and reserved a seat. Almost 5 months in advance, there were a lot of seats to choose from so I went with a window seat away from the front, but not too far back, in an area that I like. I paid for seat 17K.
The credit card transaction went through easily.
Until this point I had no problems.
Special meal request
I’m a vegetarian so I always put in a request for a meal that I can eat. On most airlines you can make a special meal request online.
Unfortunately, one can not add a special meal request online with Air Transat. They offer a few selections of special meals, but in order to get one, the passenger has to phone in and speak with a reservations agent.
Yes, a big waste of time because it now means sitting on hold waiting for a reservations agent. If I’d wanted to sit on hold, I would have phoned in to book and pay for the flight.
Geez!!!
Anyway I get a reservation agent, give her my booking number, and tell her I need a vegetarian meal.
She puts me on hold.
Apparently I’m the first passenger in all of Air Transat history to request a special meal!
She can’t figure it out. After I’ve been on hold for over 10 minutes, she comes back on the line momentarily to tell me she’s still looking into it.
She puts me on hold for another 10 minutes. I don’t know, maybe she was on her coffee break.
Eventually she comes back on the phone and adds a vegetarian meal to my booking.
Or did she?
How tough is this?
I get on Twitter and complain about how long it took to add a special meal request. An Air Transat rep messaged me and I asked her to check my booking number to make sure I really had a vegetarian meal, and she confirmed I did.
Many years ago I worked for Air Canada and got the occasional special meal request. The caller phones in, gives me the booking number, and I pull it up. The caller tells me what type of meal they need. I add it to the reservation. And we’re done. This takes no more than two minutes from the time I begin the call to ending the call.
This was an omen of what else Air Transat had in store for me…
Keeping tabs
From time to time I checked the Air Transat flight. About a month or so before departure, the price went up. A lot. Like about $1,000 more than what I paid in April.
Yikes!
I also pretended to make a booking so I could look at the available seats. I noticed that someone had reserved the aisle seat in row 17, and that would leave the center seat between us empty.
Good!
Most people are not going to book a center seat inbetween two strangers, so it would most likely remain vacant, giving both of us a little extra elbow room.
Perfect!
The night before travel
About 24 hours before the flight departs, Air Transat sends me a message that I can check in online.
And I do.
I don’t know why Air Transat wanted me to waste my time the day before. When I arrived at Gatwick Airport, I had to do it all over again.
Get your act together Air Transat!
Travel day
I arrived at Gatwick Airport with plenty of time to spare. My suitcase was checked in with Air Transat and then I proceeded to security.
At least I didn’t have to pull my laptop and Kindle out of my bag! Things are changing at security! I still had to take my shoes off. I’m an experienced traveller. I wear my cowboy boots – easy on, easy off.
Then I found a place to sit down and waited for the boarding gate to be announced.
At some point, I looked a little closer at my boarding pass and realized Air Transat had put me into seat 5K.
What the fuck?
I paid for seat 17K nearly 5 months in advance.
I’m pissed off enough to Tweet about it.
Boarding
The departure gate was called and me and the rest of the passengers headed over there – to utter chaos. We were lined up the stairs that led to the departure lounge, just to get through the first checkpoint. I could hear the PA calling passengers in various groups to begin boarding the plane.
Eventually I got through the first checkpoint and headed for the Air Transat rep just before the walkway to the plane. I told her Air Transat had switched my seat and I was unhappy about it.
Basically she told me “tough shit”. She gives me a bullshit story that at the last minute Air Transat had to bring in another plane and seats were changed.
And I get it. She has nearly 300 passengers to get on the plane. She doesn’t want to deal with me. I would have stayed and argued but I don’t know the local laws. I don’t know if the cops would have been called or I would have been denied boarding if I kicked up a stink. This woman was really bitchy, so I just proceeded onto the plane.
Carry on baggage
While I’m waiting in line it becomes obvious to me that the other passengers have airline issued tags on their carry on luggage.
I’ve only dealt with a carry on baggage label once before. I was flying with Air Canada and checking my suitcase in at Vancouver Airport. One of the staff came over and saw I had a laptop bag and an empty backpack. She asked if the empty pack was my under the seat carry on and I said yes. She wrapped a label tag around the handle.
When I checked my suitcase at Gatwick, an Air Transat employee came over to assist. I have advanced arthritis in my fingers and was having difficulty pulling the paper off the printed barcode sticker to wrap around the handle.
That would have been the last opportunity for an Air Transat employee to clarify which of my carry on was under the seat or in the overhead bin and put a label tag on it.
I was a little worried I would be challenged about it because neither of my carry on bags had a label tag. Luckily no one mentioned it.
The seat from hell
I got to seat 5K and there was a British couple sitting in the two seats beside me. Nice enough couple, coming to Ontario and renting a car for their travels.
Unfortunately there was a child in the seat behind me. The little bastard never stopped talking. He also kicked my chair repeatedly throughout the entire flight. And he put his leg through the gap between my seat and the airplane wall and kicked my arm. After the third time, I turned around and chewed out his father.
And the irresponsible father apologized. What else is he going to do? How about next time leave your badly behaved little bastard at home?
I’m not a person prone to headaches but I got one on this flight because that little bastard never shut up.
Seat 5K is the WORST seat on this Air Transat plane. The absolute worst seat I could have been put in.
None of this would have happened if I was sitting in seat 17K. The seat I paid for months in advance.
Air Transat ripped me off. They took my money for seat 17K and did the old switcheroo without my consent and stuck me into seat 5K. The dreaded seat on the plane.
Air Transat breached their contract with me.
Thirsty
Another issue happened on the plane when I was thirsty and asked the airline attendant for a ginger ale. I’d had one earlier with my lunch. You know. That special meal request that takes over 20 minutes by phone to add to one’s booking with Air Transat. By the way, the vegetarian meal wasn’t that great featuring soggy veggie lasagne and a stale bun.
The airline attendant, aka the Ginger Ale Nazi, told me no ginger ale for me. They’re only serving coffee or tea. Like what the hell? I’m looking for something cold to drink. I rarely drink hot beverages.
I would have taken a water!
So I spent about 5 hours thirsty and with my lips getting dry because Air Transat will not serve me a cold beverage.
I did get a water later when they brought a snack out about 90 minutes before arrival.
And that’s another thing. The flight was nearly 30 minutes late arriving in Toronto.
Yup, as far as I’m concerned – Air Transat SUCKS!
Fake Air Transat employees
I’ve sent a few Tweets about this Air Transat flight from hell. I’ve had a real Air Transat employee respond to me, plus some fake employees.
All the fake employees wanted me to give them my phone number so they could call, or as they suggested Whatsapp, and speak with me further.
And how do I know they’re fake? All of their accounts were created in the first day or two in September. In other words, a fake account created after spotting someone on X/Twitter complaining about a company. None of them were verified accounts. A big corporation like Air Transat would pay that fee for their customer service accounts on social media.
Ladies, we have to be smart not to get sucked in by scammers who reach out to us on social media. I’ve written posts about romance scammers, but these “customer service employees” use different methods.
Read some of these articles about how to avoid being taken in by a scammer:
Don’t Fall for a Financial Scammer
Watch out for Fraudsters and Scammers
I told the first scammer I’m not giving my phone number out to someone who just created her profile the day before. Then she gives me a phone number to call her on Whatsapp.
North America is more into texting than Whatsapp, so this is strange that a big corporation wants to use a messaging app instead of phoning directly. And a big red flag that screams SCAMMER! Well, seeing as how Air Transat scammed me out of seat 17K it might be difficult to figure out who the real scammer is here.
Except the scammer gives me a phone number so I can look up the country area code – Swaziland. Um yeah, right. Why is Air Transat contracting out customer service jobs to foreigners. Well, to save money, sure. A lot of big corporations in Canada do that. But this was just so scammy.
Two of the scammers must have been reported because their profiles are gone.
Air Transat 236 – flight from hell
I might call my Air Transat 123 the flight from hell, but it wasn’t the catastrophic engine failure that the folks on flight 236 suffered. Now, that really was the flight from hell!
On August 24, 2001, Air Transat flight 236, on a flight from Toronto to Lisbon, ran out of fuel over the Atlantic Ocean. Yikes! The pilots managed to glide the airplane about 75 miles to an airport in the Azores Islands. During this 30 minutes the oxygen masks dropped to the passengers and they were instructed to put on life vests and prepare for a water crash.
The pilots were hailed as heroes, but they were partly to blame for the plane running out of fuel due to not following protocol. The other blame fell to the mechanics for a faulty installation of a fuel line hose. Air Transat was fined $250,000 by the Canadian government, the largest fine levied against an airline.
So way to go Air Transat for going down in the history books for being the first Canadian airline to reach the $250,000 fine milestone!
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_236
Air Transat horror – their response?
I immediately filed a complaint through Air Transat’s website. Annoying enough, they have a form to fill out and the box has limited characters. My complaint is too wordy!
The real Air Transat employee on X gave me the email customerrelations@transat.com to send a full complaint too, along with my attachments – the original booking email confirmation and the boarding pass showing the seat I did NOT reserve and pay for.
To date, I have had no response from Air Transat.
And we all know that no response IS a response = fuck off.
Canadian Transportation Agency
Unfortunately for Air Transat and all other Canadian airlines that tell their passengers to fuck off, the Canadian government has a place where we can escalate a complaint. It’s called the Canadian Transportation Agency.
It falls under the Air Passenger Protection act.
A passenger has to first file a complaint with the airline they flew with. If the airline does not respond after 30 days or the passenger is unhappy with the response, then they can file a complaint with the CTA. They don’t assist with some complaints like shitty customer service. So I have no financial recourse against the bitchy gate agent in Gatwick or the Ginger Ale Nazi. But they do assist with the refund or partial refund of a ticket, including seat fees.
I guess Air Transat has so many complaints filed against them they figure what the hell is one more.
Air Transat might ignore me, but once they CTA contacts them with a complaint, they have 14 days to respond.
Watch me in action
I did a vlog on YouTube about my lousy Air Transat flight.
Don’t forget to subscribe to my YouTube channel!
Watch this space
Check back for updates.
If I receive a response from Air Transat and when I receive a response from the CTA, I will share the outcome.
Do you have an Air Transat horror story? Lay it on me! Please leave a comment below.
Published by Cheryl @ The Lifestyle Digs on October 2, 2024.
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