My Air Canada journey continued from Toronto to Montreal onboard an Airbus A321-200. While Air Canada’s A321s are really starting to show their age, a surprise awaited me on this short 316-mile flight.
Air Canada A321 Business Class Review
Air Canada has a fleet of 15 A321 jets and these are used on a variety of short and mid-haul routes. My Toronto – Los Angeles nonstop evening flight (I changed my routing to come home via Montreal) was also operated by an A321-200.
Air Canada 412
Toronto (YYZ) – Montreal (YUL)
Thursday, January 13
Depart: 1:00PM
Arrive: 2:16PM
Duration: 01hr, 16min
Distance: 316 miles
Aircraft: A321-200
Seat: 2F (Business Class)
At 12:10pm, our plane had not yet arrived, but by 12:15pm had pulled up to the gate. Passenger unloaded and by 12:35pm boarding began.
Seats
I was first onboard and welcomed by a flight attendant (in French) who handed me a sanitation kit.
The business class cabin includes 16 recliner seats configured in four rows of 2-2 seating. Each seat is 20 inches wide and has 37 inches of pitch.
Seats can be reclined manually via a silver button in the center console and power ports are also located in the center console.
Each seat has a footrest, which I find actually restricts knee room rather than provides any meaningful comfort.
A coat hook was very helpful on this very cold day…
The blue color scheme is…dated. It was well-maintained, but is really starting to show its age. These A321s are pushing 20 years old, so the seat covers from the early 2000s are remind me of flying in high school.
Non-Rev Upgrades
When I transferred to this flight earlier in the day, business class was empty – there were only 4/16 seats occupied. But we left full, with a dozen crewmembers seated in business class. Is this a usual thing on hub-to-hub routes? The flight attendant who sat next to me was Montreal-based and going home. It isn’t clear to me (considering there were no cancellations) why so many crew members had to deadhead or pass ride home instead of working a flight back home.
By the way, the flight attendants may have lavished extra attention on the flight attendants and pilots in business class, but the crewmembers were very well-behaved.
De-Icing
After we pulled out, we taxied over a de-icing area and were promptly de-iced by a quartet of guys…a very efficient process.
Food + Drink
The shocker of the flight was that a snack was served after takeoff, and I don’t just mean a bag of cashews or pretzels. Instead, we were offered (no choice) a lovely smoked salmon plate with cucumbers, onions, tomatoes, and olives.
At 316 miles, this was shorter than a Los Angeles to San Francisco flight, where you are lucky if you get a beverage in first class on any of the U.S. legacy carriers.
I had a Canada Dry club soda with lemon with my lunch.
My understanding is that all Air Canada flights serve some sort of meal in business class and that for breakfast flights it is hot (like the omelet I received from Vancouver to Toronto).
IFE
Also showing its age was the in-flight-entertainment system, which had a small selection of movies, TV shows, music, and games, but the screen was very small and the system lagged horribly. A USB-A charging port is located adjacent to the screen.
After getting annoyed at the bad lag, I just put the moving map on.
Complimentary headphones were distributed (along with a water bottle).
Lavatory
The business class lavatory, located in the front of the aircraft near the flight deck door), and had hand wash and hand cream from Vitruvi.
CONCLUSION
We landed on a very cold and gray Montreal afternoon.
Actual flight time was only about 40 minutes, which made it all the more impressive that Air Canada managed a very respectable light meal on this short flight. While the A321 is perhaps my least favorite plane I the Air Canada fleet, it was perfectly comfortable for this brief flight. Just be patient with the IFE!
I got the 787 on this route. The FAs truly hustled to get everyone their snack and drink. Surely the most pleasant 316 mi flight I’ve ever been on.
Passenger in Y also get a snack, albeit more like a drink and cookie on this flight. Reason is that shorthaul airlines out of Billy Bishop provided catering as a differentiator to AC (since you have to buy food & drink in AC Y everywhere else on domestic flights).
What you get on AC in domestic C varies according to distance, time of day, and whether it is a “signature route” or not (ie Coast to Coast). Early morning tends to be the traditional omelet, then there are a vareity of options throughout the day (late evening flights only get a pack of chips & drink, if I remember correctly).
A potential reason for a well filled C cabin on AC between YYZ and YUL is the amount of standby traffic who try to catch an earlier flight than they booked (I’m guilty of this too).
On the old cabin, agree! I can’t get over how they painted the shorthaul fleet in racoon, but left the toothpaste interior….oh well.
The word “coat hook” is in English only, not French. The Quebec government should sue the pants off Air Canada and seize the plane for that. Maybe arrest the CEO and sentence him to death (but suspend the sentence)?
For what is worth once I was chatting with an AC flight attendant, she said it has common for FAs that live in YUL to bid to switch to YYZ. YUL is a higher seniority base and is YYZ has more interesting routes than YUL Plus not all FAs in YYZ speak French so that give them a slight improvement on bidding.
The deicing pad at Toronto Pearson is well thought out. There’s room for several planes to park, and I’ve always seen at least a couple of trucks working on each plane. For north or east departures it is located very close to the start of the runway. Beats the heck out of the Newark process I sat through several times back in the day – waiting for a deicer truck at the gate, having the snow build up while waiting for traffic to clear enough to taxi, going back to the terminal to get deiced again.
The seats on the A321 look a lot more comfortable than some of their newer relatives on more recent deliveries which see devoid of any padding at all. I’m quite happy to fly transcontinental on the A321 but I would avoid the 7M8 because it is relatively so uncomfortable.
Air Canada’s business is like Emirates Economy and not the A380 economy the old 777 economy.
Um, no.
They wish!
I am booked for Air Canada non stop from Toronto to Delhi. It’s a very long flight. Do they serve hard liquor during the flight?
Yes, liquor will be free-flowing.
You had far superior service on a one hour flight than I experienced on a five hour afternoon flight from YYZ to YVR this week. The “snack” was a bag of almonds. A drink was served bu there was no second offered at all in the flight other than for wine with lunch. Food was acceptable but that was it. There was no linen service for the meal. The staff was professional but that is the best I can say. Not the usual front of the house treatment from Air Canada.
Thank you for this review, i was about to book a Madrid- San Francisco business ticket, and thanks to it i decided to fly with another airline. This looks very dated and not really a business class for a 5:30h flight (Toronto-Sfo), very disappointing. Thanks again.