Our Nightmare Experience with Air Canada

I’m going to tell you about my worst experience ever from flying, and why I will avoid flying with Air Canada ever again.

The reason I say “avoid” rather than ‘never’ fly with them again, is because Air Canada (like many airlines now) doesn’t have a lot of competition.

This experience still leaves me with anxiety about travel in general, but it shows that there’s so much out of our control with airlines, and even if you as the passenger do everything right – you could still have your whole vacation ruined.

Sometimes we may have no choice but to fly with Air Canada, but I can promise you we will do everything in our power not to.

I don’t usually hold a grudge against businesses for bad customer service, but what happened to me and my family was so unfair, and we have yet to see any compensation from their error which ended up resulting in:

• Being denied boarding TWICE, through no fault of our own
• Sleeping in an airport
• Losing almost 2 good nights of sleep in a row
• Missing a whole day from our vacation

Here is our story.

Why We Were Denied Boarding 2 Flights and Ended Up Sleeping in an Airport

Myself, husband and my 2 kids (10 and 2 years old) booked flights from Toronto, Ontario to Reno, Nevada with Air Canada for July 4th, 2023.

We were planning to visit my brother in Lake Tahoe.

The original flights we booked with Air Canada were cancelled months before, because of them not having enough bookings to make the flight worth it.

This was fine (we thought) because Air Canada was able to reissue our tickets as United Airlines (UA) tickets that left on the same day.

Although the new UA tickets were for a mucha much earlier flight than the one we booked, we were just glad that they left on the same day.

On the morning of our flight we did everything we were supposed to do: woke up early, and showed up at Pearson Airport 3 hours before our flight with all the documents we needed.

When we went to the United Airlines check-in counter, they said that they couldn’t check us in “because of an issue with the e-ticket.”

We were listed as being on the flight – that wasn’t the problem. All four of our names were listed as passengers and we had assigned seats. But because of some clerical error, they were unable to print boarding passes for us.

The person at the United Airlines counter told us that this wasn’t an issue they could fix, and they sent us to the customer service phones to call Air Canada, which we did.

Air Canada told us on the phone that everything was fine – they had fixed the problem and reissued our ticket.

When we went back to the United Airlines ticket counter, we were told that it was still the same problem; they said they couldn’t print a boarding pass and we had to get Air Canada to try again to reissue the ticket properly.

We went back to the phones again to call Air Canada a second time – they told us that they had done everything from their end, and now it was up to United Airlines to figure out how to issue us a ticket.

By now, it was getting close to our boarding time, and we hadn’t even checked in or gone through security. We had two cranky kids that had been up since 4 am. It was turning into a very stressful morning.

We were basically bounced back and forth for 3 hours with neither of the airlines taking any responsibility, and just saying that the other one had to fix it.

In the end, we ended up missing our flight.

After waking 2 kids up at 3 in the morning and being there ON TIME for our flight that was very frustrating because we WERE there, they just wouldn’t let us through!

We were rebooked onto another flight with a connection that left 12 hours later. The new tickets we were issued was for Toronto to Reno with a layover in San Francisco.

Since 12 hours was a crazy long time to wait at an airport, my father-in-law drove all the way down to the airport to pick us up (he had already dropped us off that morning) and took us back to his place.

We spend the day at my in-law’s house, and then come back to the airport a 2nd time…just praying that this time, we would be allowed to board.

All went well (at the Toronto airport at least) this time.

We were soon on a flight from Toronto to San Francisco, with only a 1-hour layover scheduled for San Franciso.

At least we would still make it to Lake Tahoe by that evening – or so we thought.

I wish I could say that that’s what ended up happening, but sadly it wasn’t.

When we arrived at San Francisco Airport (SFO,) the ticket counter seemed to encounter the same problem at the United Airlines had back in Toronto that same morning – again we were listed on the flight and had seats assigned to us, but they couldn’t print a ticket.

Our names were there, but they said they weren’t able to print a boarding pass because Air Canada didn’t transfer ownership of our flights properly.

By the time it was resolved, our flight was already leaving.

We were denied boarding a second time. We watched from the gate window as our flight to Reno (with our luggage on it!) left without us.

By now, both kids were crying. We called my brother and his partner to tell them the news.

Another part of this bad news is that we were originally supposed to arrive in Lake Tahoe several hours before. We missed almost the whole day of spending time with my brother.

By now, it was 10pm, and our newly issued flight from San Francisco to Reno left at 6am the next morning.

At least we would have the full next day in Lake Tahoe with my brother and his partner.

Now, this is the only part of this story that I feel we did have some control over and may be our fault. Since it was 10 pm, and our flight left at 6 am the next morning (meaning we’d have to be at the airport for 4 am) we figured it would be easier to just sleep in the airport rather than try to shuttle to a hotel, only to spend 5 hours there before having to come back to the airport.

Our choice to spend the night in the airport rather than 5-6 hours in a nearby hotel was our decision, and at the time, it seemed to make sense.

It was only 8 hours after all.

By then, we were so tired and the last thing we wanted was to spend an hour on the phone trying to get compensated for a night in a hotel.

It just seemed easier to stay put in the airport and try to get some sleep there.

Both my husband and I have slept in airports before, in our pre-kid years when we were travelling alone.

But now having experienced sleeping in an airport with kids, I would highly advise against it (especially with young kids under 5.)

Although it’s quieter overnight in an airport than during the day, it was still loud. There We were cold, and it just wasn’t comfortable. I don’t think I got any sleep at all.

We were thankful that the airport staff provided overnight kits to people who were spending the night – we got blankets, deoderant, toothbrushes and toothpaste. (All of our toiletries were in are checked bags which had left for Reno without, so we were thankful for that.)

Luckily, we were allowed to board our flight to Reno that morning – and we were soon in Lake Tahoe at my brother’s house.

In total, this whole Air Canada whole ordeal cost us:

• 2 nights of sleep in a row
• lots of stress
• took a day from our vacation
• lots of our time, in trying to get compensation for this issue.

How It’s Been Resolved

We are entitled to some sort of compensation for Air Canada not transferring our tickets properly to United Airlines.

So far as of 2025, we haven’t received any compensation.

Initially, Air Canada offered us $150 Air Canada vouchers for two of our flights for all the trouble, but not for all four.

So in total, we would have gotten merely a $300 voucher if we accepted that offer then.

We didn’t think that was fair, because we should be compensated for all four of the flights that we missed, not just half of them.

We decided to go through the process of repealing with the Ministry of Transport. They said it would be a wait time of about 18 months before we heard anything.

We don’t find that hard to believe, because there is a whole Facebook group of over 200,000 people who have all had issues similar to ours with Canadian Airlines. (Not all are with Air Canada, but the vast majority are.)

It’s been 18 months since that summer 2023 Air Canada nightmare, but we’re still waiting to hear back from the Ministry about our appeal.

They changed their system over in late 2024, and my husband had to re-submit the appeal (which we had to do within 30 days or our appeal would have been permanently denied.)

Final Thoughts

This is what happens when a big business such as Air Canada, doesn’t have much competition.

We can’t change what happened to us, but we hope that Air Canada will be made to compensate us fairly for the trouble we went through as a result of their system and the error that was made on their part.

We hope to be offered vouchers for all four of our tickets, rather than only two of them. We should be offered compensation for all four flights that we were supposed to take.