Air Canada Boeing 787 Economy Class Review

Air Canada uses Boeing 787 Dreamliners on many long-haul international routes, including from Sydney and Brisbane to Vancouver. These aircraft are also frequently used on busy domestic routes such as Toronto-Vancouver.

For this review, I tested out Air Canada’s Boeing 787-9 Economy Class on a relatively short Canadian domestic flight from Vancouver to Calgary.

Flight Details

Flight number	AC214
Route	Vancouver (YVR) to Calgary (YYC)
Aircraft type	Boeing 787-9
Class of travel	Economy
Seat number	33A
On-time performance	We arrived 15 minutes late
Star rating

The route

Flight Cost

I flew this sector as part of a paid one-way ticket from Vancouver to Montreal (via Calgary). In total, I paid AUD430 for an Economy Flex ticket from Vancouver to Montreal.

Air Canada Economy fares from Vancouver to Calgary, the flight which I reviewed, typically start from around AUD178 one-way for an Economy Basic ticket, or occasionally less when on sale.

You could also book an Economy reward seat on this route for 10,000 Virgin Australia Velocity points + $27.80 in taxes. Alternatively, seats are available to book through any other Star Alliance frequent flyer program or even Etihad Guest, which charges 5,000 Etihad Guest miles and a similar amount of taxes for an Economy award seat on this route.

Airport Experience

It was a busy Wednesday morning at when I arrived at Vancouver International Airport. Thanks to my Star Alliance Gold status, I was able to use Air Canada’s priority check-in queue. But with only two staff manning the counters, I still had to wait around 30 minutes to check in!

After collecting my boarding passes, the good news was that there was no wait for the priority security line and I was in the domestic Maple Leaf Club in no time. (Priority security and lounge access are also Star Alliance Gold benefits and not normally included with an Economy ticket.)

Air Canada’s Maple Leaf lounge in Vancouver was crowded and felt a bit dated. There was a basic buffet with snacks like cookies and various cold salads. At each table, there was also a QR code you could use to order hot food to your table. There were three lunch options on this particular day:

I ordered a butter chickpea curry, which came in a cardboard box. It tasted better than it looked, but I didn’t get much time to finish eating as it took around 40 minutes for the food to arrive!

Note that while Virgin Australia is a partner of Air Canada, Velocity Gold or Platinum status does not accord you any extra benefits like priority check-in, extra baggage or lounge access when travelling with Air Canada. (Frankly, that’s a rather poor deal for Velocity members!)

Boarding began close to schedule and priority boarding worked well.

The Hard Product

Air Canada uses a standard 3-3-3 configuration in Economy Class on its Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner. I do find the seats a little narrow on all Boeing 787s that have 9-abreast seating, but Air Canada’s configuration is no worse than most other airlines flying the same aircraft type (except Japan Airlines, which has wider Economy seats on its 787 in an 8-abreast layout).

The cabin seemed fairly new and modern, with pleasant mood lighting.

There was a decent amount of legroom in my standard Economy seat. The seat was covered in a cloth material and was reasonably well padded, with an adjustable headrest.

Wi-fi was available on this flight for a fee. There was also a personal in-flight entertainment screen at every seat.

Unfortunately, this was the third Air Canada flight I had taken in a row where my in-flight entertainment screen was not responsive. As soon as I sat down at my seat, I noticed that my screen did not respond to any input and was therefore unusable. Normally this wouldn’t have been too much of an issue, as the crew could have fixed this by resetting my entertainment system. However, as I’ll get to shortly, the cabin crew refused to even try.

At least the views from my window seat en-route from Vancouver from Calgary were excellent!

The Soft Product

Shortly after boarding, I politely asked a cabin crew member to reset my in-flight entertainment system which wasn’t responding. The flight attendant dismissed my request, telling me that the issue would automatically resolve itself after the safety video played.

Boarding took quite a while, and the flight was delayed because passenger bags were still being loaded, so I sat there for almost an hour waiting for the safety video to play. This did not fix the issue, so I rang the crew call bell after takeoff. Nobody came, and in fact, my call bell light was still on when we landed in Calgary! (To be honest, I think that’s pretty bad – what if I had pushed the bell because I was in distress and needed help?!)

Two more times during the flight, I politely asked crew members walking past if they could please reset my screen. The first crew member said that she would, but never did. The second crew member, when I asked towards the end of the flight, rudely lectured me about it being a short flight and made me feel like I was being a nuisance.

Now, I get that the crew was busy with the in-flight service by that point, and admittedly the flight was completely full. I can understand that. But by this point, around two hours had already passed since I first requested the screen to be reset (during boarding). Not a single crew member made any effort whatsoever to fix my malfunctioning entertainment system, and I never received any sort of apology.

On Air Canada domestic flights over two hours, the airline offers food for sale in Economy from its Air Canada Bistro menu. As this flight was under two hours, there was no food available but every passenger was offered a complimentary non-alcoholic drink. I just had a cup of orange juice.

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 70 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include economics, aviation & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.