If you were hoping to go visit Canada this summer — as I am — you may be getting nervous about those plans. Thanks to an impressively terrible operation at Air Canada and a moderately terrible one at WestJet along with the return of arrival testing rules, Canada is uncharacteristically proving to be exceedingly unfriendly.
Let’s start with Air Canada. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sustained meltdown to the extent that Air Canada has pulled off this summer. And I’m not using the “meltdown” word lightly. According to Anuvu data, from June 1 – July 14, Air Canada has been canceling nearly 10 percent of its scheduled flights (actually 9.18 percent) while getting a mere 36.1 percent of flights to their destination within 14 minutes of schedule. It seems unnecessary to say this, but… that is really, really bad.