Review: Air Canada Economy A319-100 Los Angeles to Montreal
Review: Air Canada Rouge Economy 767-300ER Montreal to Rome
Review: Air France Economy A321-200 Nice to Paris Orly
Trip to Italy, Vatican City, Monaco, and France
Review: Air Canada Economy 767-300 Paris CDG to Montreal
Review: Air Canada Economy A319-100 Montreal to Los Angeles
YOUTUBE: Air Canada: Los Angeles to Montreal
YOUTUBE: Air Canada Rouge: Montreal to Rome
YOUTUBE: Air France: Nice to Paris Orly
YOUTUBE: Air Canada: Paris CDG to Montreal
YOUTUBE: Air Canada: Montreal to Los Angeles
As you can see by the above, this was a pretty long trip with a lot of flights, but it was most certainly an enjoyable one. As a matter of fact, this summer was full of flights because, after this entire trip, I have another trip with a whole bunch of domestic flights. So, let’s get to it: Vacation Time!!
We try to fly star alliance as much as possible, but that does not work out well sometimes. It did this time, however. Air Canada departs from terminal 2, so we made our way there very early in the morning, around 5:30 AM I’d say. A funny thing to note is that a lot of Southwest flights leave very early in the morning, so terminal 1 was the most crowded place of all the terminals at that hour.
Here is a picture of our Airbus A319 from the road and walkway between terminals 1 and 2.
Since we were going to be moving around a lot in Europe, checking in bags would be inefficient, so each of us took one handbag and that’s it! No check-ins, so we headed right to security which was slowly starting to get crowded with all the other Air Canada flights that were leaving at that time, and the Hawaiian air flights. TSA pre-check once again saved the day and made life much easier for us to get through faster.
Once on the other side, I was in a dilemma: I wanted to spot, but I was VERY HUNGRY. I got up at around 4 to get ready and come to the airport and had a Banana and some water in that time. I eat a lot, so that definitely would not suffice, just like the service on this flight *cough* Air Canada *cough* (I’ll explain later). So anyways I decided to spot some, then eat, then spot some more.
This was breakfast below and it was amazing, but maybe because I was hungry. But it was Ciabatta bread buns with some kind of omelet patty in between which had sausage, bacon, and tomato. Even if it was just because I was hungry, it still tasted good to me.
After eating this, it was time to board our flight to Montreal which was a little over 5 hours, a long flight to sit in an A319 with minimal service for sure.
Air Canada
LAX-YUL Airbus A319-100
We were parked right next to an Avianca A330-200 while we were boarding. After doors closed and the safety demonstration was done, we had a short taxi out to runway 24L where a lot of international flights leave from, and north-side LAX airplanes. Usually, 24R is used as a landing runway, but it was under construction at the time of this flight, and you can clearly see trucks all over the runway in the youtube video for this flight. Takeoff was very cool to watch given the early hour and flying through the low altitude clouds at that time.
Here’s a picture shortly after departure from LAX turning south towards Palos Verdes:
Below you can see we are flying over Corona, a beautiful day it was for sure:
Soon enough we reached our cruising altitude at which “service” started. By “service” I mean a drink service with no snacks, on a transcontinental flight. That below is all we got. I mean I had a similar complaint on my last trip report about the lack of food snack, and I was not too happy, but ok. This flight is more than twice as long as the previous flight and the flight times span across two meal times. I am not asking for a full meal, but at least they should provide something. SOMETHING! Many people ended up buying food, which I’m sure was Air Canada’s goal: make more money, but it was not gonna fly by me:
Well at least the views were nice:
At this point, we began our descent. Yes, that was the ONLY drink service on this entire flight. Let me say that again more explicitly: That was the ONLY drink service, or any complimentary consumable for that matter served on this 5.5-hour flight that ran across the hours of breakfast and lunch. Terrible, at least my next flight was slightly better.
You can’t see it here, but we were following the St. Lawrence river all the way up to Montreal Airport, and it was a very choppy approach.
Below is a video of flying over Montreal Mirabel International Airport, another airport in Montreal, though I’m not sure as to the extent of its function:
Now begins the choppiness. Even on the return flight from Paris to Montreal, there was still a very choppy approach. I could never figure out how bad the crosswinds were, or whether we were caught in a heavy plane’s wake both times, I don’t know.
After our turbulent touchdown, we taxied toward the US departures terminal, a very boring one indeed.
Here are some other planes as we came to a full stop at the gate:
Ok, so I was not very happy with this flight. I hope this has changed today to what it was on the day I took this flight (July 2015). But only serve one round of drinks on a 5.5-hour flight is absurd. I realize we were in economy, but still, I expected better than a glass of Apple juice and water for that long of a flight. I would not fly this route again in economy if I had to. The lack of service is something that just makes the money input not worthwhile. But at least the views were nice if not anything else. Stay tuned for the rest of the trip report after this one, for each of them were better than this one.