Originally Posted By: StevieC
We have a great Airline up here that's called WestJet and the company is a co-op (owned by all of it's employees). They have superb service and really have a great time at what they do. They receive over 800,000 requests for employment a month!
I try to fly them anywhere I go and have been on almost 20 flights with them for work and have had nothing but the best of service experiences.
Sorry about your terrible experiences...
Awe, c'mon. WS has as many issues as any other airline, they're just different ones. Once they get the planes in the air they're pretty good, but their on-the-ground service design is just weird.
For instance, I arrived at Pearson a while ago about five hours early for my flight. I had a full-fare ticket, so changing flights to the one that left in an hour should be easy, right?
The lineup for the check-in counter was half-way down the terminal, though. After ten minutes of standing still it was clear that I wouldn't get to the counter in time. So what's plan B? I decided to get a boarding pass for my original flight from a kiosk, go through security to the air-side, go to the gate for the earlier flight and switch planes there. Piece of cake, right?
Well, that's when I discovered that WS has a rule that wouldn't allow me do a kiosk check-in more than 4 hours before the flight I was booked on! In other words, I couldn't switch to the earlier flight until after the earlier flight had departed.
So, while I stood in line, I phoned the travel agent's emergency help line on my cell and paid them a fee to change my booking to the earlier flight so I could go to the kiosk and get a boarding pass and leave.
So, yes, while WS is partly owned by its employees, some of the employees are seriously out of touch with how the traveling public travels.
What I've concluded after 25 years of being top tier in one or more frequent flyer program every year is that every airline has some things it does well, and some things it doesn't. None of them do everything well. Period.
Air Canada is better for business travelers - there's more "just get me there" logic to the way they do business than there is with Westjet. Westjet, as good as they are, clearly cut their teeth on vacation travelers who don't travel much. I fly them to and from Toronto quite often for my charity work (they're cheaper), and I just put up with the nonsense.