Just a quick question, I am travelling to Calgary as part of my trip to Alaska in July/August, and my outbound flight from LHR is with Air Canada, but I have never flown with them before…can anyone tell me what type of aircraft I am likely to fly on (depart on 23rd July!), and has anyone flown with them, and if so, what was it like?

Many thanks.

Cloud_9,

I flew LHR – YYC [AC853] B767-300 C-FMWV

and YYC – LHR [AC850] A330-200 C-GFUR…

..In Oct/Nov 2004 and found Air Canada to be fairly good. The outbound flight to Calgary from London was virtually empty and the service was excellent! 😀 Plenty of food, drinks etc and really friendly F/As. The pillows and blankets were free, although this may not be the case now. Both flights were on time.

However coming back on the 850 the flight was full, the legroom seemed a lot less and the service was nowhere near as good.. 😡 The F/As were ‘trolly grannies’ and unfortuanately they seemed to be very stressed out and tired, perhaps not their fault but still it wasn’t very good.

The lack of PTVs was poor I felt, especially on such long flights. I had to laugh though, on the A330 there was a space for them but instead of there being a screen it was covered over with material (held on by velcro!)

So in conclusion Air Canada are ok, not bad but certainly nothing special! From the experience I had it would appear it’s very ‘hit and miss’ with the crew you get!

Regards,

Joe

PS – Calgary Immigration are horrible!

No not at all! We were just imaginative and adventerous with our locations!

Joe

Manchester – 10th June apparently.

Moggy

That date seems quite likely as I’ve received information from the Severnside Aviation Group saying the A380 is due at Filton for the Airbus/RR Families Day, which also happens to be on Saturday 10th June.

It would be quite easy for it to fly up to Manchester for the Airbus Hawarden Families Day after visiting the Airbus Filton Families Day .

Regards,

Joe

Love affair with swans????? :confused:

😮 hehe!

I like seeing the nature shots!

Nice pics there! Love the new KLM c/s F50! Looks great!

Absolutely fantastic shots there Grey!

That bird (“G-SWAN”) is excellent!

Reminds me of the KLM swan…. 😀

Many thanks for bringing that pprune thread to our attention RIPConcorde. It makes an interesting read to say the least!

What the French are doing by refusing to use English in all ATC transmissions is not only very dangerous, but extremely unprofessional and incredibly selfish in my opinion.

It would be poor practise at any airport, but at one of Europe’s largest and busiest international airports, handling huge amounts of aircraft movements every day it’s even worse.

Every other airport makes the effort and uses English for all transmissions. My question is what’s stopping them?

It would appear the French are fully capable of communicating in English as the ATCOs communicate in English to non-French speaking aircraft all the time, and the pilots communicate in English at non-French speaking airports all the time. It would therefore appear that the only reason they are communicating in French is because they simply can’t be bothered to communicate in English! I find it hard to believe that they are putting thousands of peoples lives at risk every day due to their laziness, and in my opinion that’s totally unacceptable.

I also find it incredibly hard to believe that fatal accident occured there a result of this, and yet Paris ATC continue to speak only in French to French a/c.

Although the language difference was not the sole cause of the accident a few years ago, it was certainly a main factor and a prime example of what happens when ATC fail to follow rules and communicate as they should do.

I think the senior management at Paris CDG have to face up to some serious issues before a major accident happens. It will be too late then, and after a lot of hurt and upset. It would seem they are prepared to wait for another accident to happen before they are forced to change the way they work.

The international rule of using English for all ATC transmissions is there for a reason – It saves lives.

I just wish Paris CDG would get a grip and start doing things properly before many people die in a tragic accident.

A quick look on the pprune forum reveals more..

Brilliant Shots!

I love the FUA 737-800, looks great! 😀 ..and I really like the AEU 737 too!

Shame there’s no group photo though! 😉

That ex- Austrian F70 looked awful!

(The coldest I’ve been for a very, very long time was the morning of Sunday 18th Dec at Hullavingon doing ATC gliding! My slot wasn’t until late afternoon so for the whole day I was hanging around waiting for my flight, stood right in the middle of an exposed airfield doing not a lot! When I had to attach the launch cable my hands were so cold I could hardly do it – anyone who’s in the ATC and has been gliding will know those launch cables are dreadful at the best of times!)