It’s been a crazy year. I usually rack up about 50,000 miles of flying each year – some of it being business travel, mostly to conferences, and some of it being leisure travel. I’m usually on at least 2 different continents each year and I spend a significant time inside an aircraft.
That ended abruptly in February. I remember the last flight. I was in Savannah, GA visiting a client after attending a conference in Atlanta. There was talk about COVID-19 but it seems to be a long way away from where I was. Upon entering the United States a week before I was only asked if I had recently traveled to China. Other than that it was pretty normal stuff, a little chit chat with the immigration agent as to why I was flying to Atlanta and that was it. I’d done this all before.
Once I returned back home, Canada – the world – went into lockdown. Everybody switched from working on site to working remotely. My day to day clients are now seem via video link or conference call. My home office is now my office. And this would seem to be the way for the foreseeable future.
So – getting slightly stir crazy I began to contemplate somewhere that I could travel to. Perhaps not as easily and freely as I was used to, but as least somewhere new. I decided on Mexico (via Washington DC) which is how I ended up back in YYZ today. I wanted to write a bit about the flight experience and how it differs these days from the pre-COVID days.
I had booked a 10AM flight out of Ottawa since there are now limited connections I did not want to cut things too close in YYZ. I arrived at YOW just before 08:30 to be greeted by a very empty airport. The line at Tim Horton’s on the third level (the only one open) just had employees standing in line. It made it very quick to get through security and to the gate.
Suffice to say that since I booked this flight there have been a lot of changes and cancellations. Eventually it was decided that this flight would be operated by an Airbus A220. I really like this as I have been trying to fly this aircraft for a while now. It’s very quiet and quite roomy (at least in business class). The inflight entertainment is much better than the old systems that they use on the E90 / E75 and is much more like the B787.
I hardly ever take a selfie when flying but this felt like a unique situation as I have not been on an aircraft in so long. Face coverings are required at all time unless eating or drinking. The flight was fairly empty – 15 people sat in economy and 5 people sat in business. Since there were so few people it was socially distanced. However, this is not the policy for Air Canada, so you could be sat next to other people on your flight.
One of the treats to the business class cabin is that they serve food. Pre-COVID Air Canada served quite a nice breakfast on a plate with real cutlery and a nice coffee mug. When the pandemic first started they switch to serving nothing except a bottle of water on short haul routes. Now we have something in between. These are pre-packaged meals and for this reason they are considered safer than somebody preparing your food in the forward galley.