Annals of Air Canada Service

We’re meeting my [[Mom]] and [[Dad]] at Heathrow Airport in London on Monday morning. If all goes according to plan, our planes, from Halifax and Toronto, will converge there within 10 minutes of each other.

Because I have access to the Air Canada Arrivals Lounge at Heathrow I should, in theory, be able to get my four traveling companions admitted as guests. But as I wasn’t sure whether the guest policy can be extended to cover four guests, I sent used Air Canada’s website to send them a question on March 5th:

Your website suggests that it’s possible for me to bring guests to the lounge with me for payment of a “guest fee” of $10. Can you tell me if there’s a maximum number of guests I can bring with me? I’m traveling with my partner, my two parents, and my 6-year old son; is there any problem with purchasing guest access for these 4 guests?

I waited patiently for a reply. And waited. And waited. Today, 11 days later, came the following reply:

As mentioned in the e-mail that you already visited the website. However for more information not found on our website, we kindly request you to contact Maple Leaf Club at 1-866-556-9504. Or you may email at mapleleafclub@aircanada.ca.

Setting aside the lack of proper sentence structure, the email is, well, nonsensical. Presumably the only reason I would be asking in the first place is if the information was not found on their website.

Regardless, I dutifully emailed the mapleleafclub@aircanada.ca email address. Ten minutes later (they’re obviously much more on the ball!) came, alas, an equally unhelpful reply:

For CIBC Maple Leaf Club card holder/members, you must contact CIBC directly as they manage their own program. The number to call is CIBC 1-888-737-2665.

Setting aside the fact that Air Canada actually runs the Maple Leaf lounges, and it’s going to be an Air Canada employee at the door admitting us or not, I called the number as they suggested.

My call was answered on the first ring, and once I’d made my question clear the agent went away to check for an answer. After 2 minutes she came back to read me the information from the same Air Canada website page I’d started at — where there’s no information about the maximum number of guests.

So I guess we’ll just wait and see what happens…