Canadian Airlines

Last Saturday I had a round trip flight with Air Canada Jazz. During this trip I was lucky to fly on both a Bombardier Dash 8-300 and a Bombardier CRJ-200 aircraft, both made in Canada. Today I’m going to talk about my experience flying on the CRJ — I’ll get to the DH3 in a later review. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to take any photos or video of the trip because I had forgotten my SD card in my computer at home. It would’ve been nice to provide you guys with a more visual perspective from my trip. There’s always next time though…

My initial experience with the aircraft wasn’t as positive as I would’ve liked it to be. My flight arrived to the airport earlier than expected, however, it was then delayed because a cargo door was frozen shut. This delay caused me to arrive late to my destination by 45 minutes. With that said, I’m sure this happens quite a bit, especially considering how cold it gets up in the sky. Furthermore, I don’t expect much from any airline when it comes to on-time performance — they’re all horrible.

Once we finally boarded the aircraft, I noticed immediately how little head space there was. Considering the fact that I am 6 foot 2, you can probably imagine all of the bending over I had to do. The captain, who was greeting passengers, even had a giggle when my head was rubbing the ceiling every few steps I made. The height of the aircraft isn’t that important, however, especially since passengers are seated for a majority of the flight.

I was seated in seat 8A, an exit row window seat. The great thing about sitting here is all of the extra leg room that you get, which was really nice for me and my long legs. On the other hand, a couple of things that I didn’t appreciate about this seat was how far forward the window was situated and how cold it was. As the plane increased in altitude, the colder it became. The person beside me actually had to take her jacket off and wrap it around her legs to warm up.

One last con I have about this particular flight was the fact that water was dripping on my head, along with a number of other passengers seated in the A sections along the entire aircraft. This is one thing that really frustrated me, mostly because of the amount of money I had to dish out to be on that flight. You’d think that at least some of that money that was made by the airline would go to ensuring that customers don’t get wet during their flight. Some of the passengers were even getting a little concerned that this water was coming from the outside — which it was not. You can always tell which people aren’t frequent flyers, as they seem to get paranoid quite easily.

Now that we’ve gotten all of the negatives parts of my flight out of the way, let’s focus on the positive aspects. I must say that I was very impressed with how smooth the flight was. Even when we were going through turbulence (which we were for a majority of the flight), the jet was able to maintain stability and there were very little sudden movements. The only time I felt that I was “losing my stomach” was when we were levelling off at cruising altitude and beginning our descent.

The boarding process was quite impressive as well. In stead of inviting everyone at once to hop on the plane, they did it by rows. This made getting to my seat much easier, as I didn’t have to worry about the person behind me breathing down my neck when stowing luggage in the overhead bin.

All in all, the actual flight was quite enjoyable. If I had to choose though, I’d much rather fly on a 737, as there’s more room for movement throughout the cabin and the windows are higher. Nevertheless, it’s still a fantastic aircraft for short journeys.

Photo: Afagen on Flickr