I have previously recommended on this forum a tour operator called Canadian Affair for people travelling between the UK and Canada. I have booked a third trip with them despite a problem on the last trip when they cancelled my flight home and we ended up flying to Manchester via Toronto from Vancouver. I thought this was just a one off - but no.

Two weeks before I'm due to depart Canadian Affair have phoned to tell me they have cancelled my return flight AGAIN.

My new travel options being if I want the premium economy seat I have prebooked and paid for I can return home a day early or I can leave three days later and fly from Vancouver to Manchester UK in an ecomony seat.

No apology, no explanation, no nothing. They were not even going to refund the accommodation costs for the night we will no longer be in Vancouver until I asked them to.

We have had to take the option of coming home a day early but now am faced with either shelling out £60 on a taxi to bring us home from the airport or struggling on the train after an 11hr flight as the friend who was picking us up works on a Friday when we now be landing.

Coupled with this they have re-routed the flight out so it lands 30mins later eating into the time I had allowed to get to the harbour to catch the Nanaimo ferry. And they got the pre-booked seat reservations wrong.

Again no apology, no explanation.

I just wanted to inform other potential customers of Canadian Affair that I would no longer recomend them unless you don't mind having to revise all your plans or have the flexibility to build in three or four extra vacation days at the start and end of your holiday.

Best wishes

Jo

Thanks for the Info.

Sorry to hear about your problems. It is very useful to have some feedback on travel co's
Has anyone else had any bad experiances with other travel companies or any really good ones?

Dear all

Just an update. After phoning Canadian Affair again tonight to reconfirm the new flight times and seat numbers for our re-arranged flight the story has gone from bad to worse.

My one comfort had been that at least on the return flight we had still been able to keep a window and ailse seat (the plane is configured with two seats at the side then an ailse with a block in the middle. Guess what - the info I had been given was wrong, we haven't got a window and ailse seat, we are now stuck in the middle block. So bang goes our chance of getting any sleep on the way home.

Oh and the flights have been re-routed again. We are no longer stopping at Calgary or Stansted but Gatwick.

We spoke to someone (apparently a director of the company- I say apparently as every single phone-call we have had with this company has contained at least one lie) who has told us that in September and October planes go in for their annual service and so they cancel lots of flights and we have just been unlucky to be caught twice.

When asked what incentive we had to book with them again, or if they were going to make any goodwill gesture since we no longer having the flights ot holiday we have paid for the answer was total silence. They haven't even offered to refund our pre-booking seat fee of £7 each.

I am utterly fed up with the entire thing (you have got the short version believe me) and if I could cancel I would.

Jo

British Airways flies directly from Heathrow to Vancouver...

We used Canadian Affair on our recent trip to the Rockies, this summer, flying from Manchester to Calgary. We payed extra to upgrade to pre-booked seats in the premium cabin. On the way out the flight was great, on time, comfortable and with good service.

When we checked in at Calgary on our way back, we were told that 2 flights had been amalgamated and that we no longer had our pre-booked seats in the premium cabin (window seats, near the front). We were instead allocated central seats in the main cabin. What we were told by the ground staff is that a flight to Gatwick had been cancelled, due a a technical fault and that they had moved all the Thomas Cook passengers to Manchester onto the Mytravel flight and used our plane to take the other delayed passengers to Gatwick.

It then went from bad to worse. The flight back to Manchester, starts from Vancouver and we discovered that the plane had not yet taken off. To cut a long story short, the plane clipped wings with another one take off and had to go back. It then developed a further technical fault and the upshot was that instead of leaving at 7.30 in the evening, we boarded at 8am the next morning, finaly taking off just after 9am. We were put in the airport hotel and at least got a meal and a room, though little sleep, as we had to wait for confirmation of the flight times, delivered to our room at midnight and were then told to check in at 5am - then given an alarm call at 3,50am! We finaly back to Manchester after midnight Monday night/Tuesday morning, arriving home around 2.30am, which also meant we had a problem getting to work the next day.

The journey back in the standard seats was cramped and uncomfortable and the level of service very poor. We did get a full refund of the extra we paid for the premium cabin and pre-booked seats but I still have letters of complaint being dealt with. They insist all complaints must be in writing, and send a response to say they will reply within 28 days. they then appear to sit on the letter for 27 days before dealing with it. This means a lengthy wait, 2 months on from the holiday, I am awaiting the reply to my 2nd letter! They did send a letter offering a discount from a future holiday but I don't yet know all the terms, conditions and restrictions and am wondering if it really worth the risk.

Thanks, guys, for reminding me why the extra I pay to fly scheduled airlines, with reasonable usage cycles and adequate back up, rather than with charter carriers, is worth it.

Dear Ron

I'm so glad you have the resources to buy complete peace of mind and I quite agree that this may be a case of you get what you pay for.

But when you are on a budget you have to use the carriers available to you or not travel at all. When I return I will have to start looking for alternative operators with whom I can afford to travel, as I would dearly love to return to Canada next year.

The other reason for not using scheduled flights is that none of the main carriers have direct flights from Manchester to Calgary or Vancouver. Going BA, Air Canada, etc, means a long car journey or another flight down to London, for us, which adds both cost and time.

Joy, have you looked at Zoom or Globespan (air Transat)?

Sorry Jo, not Joy

Dear Maria

I have been looking at Zoom and would appreciate any feedback on them. Thanks for the Gobespan tip - another possible to add to the list.

Best wishes

Hello Jo,
Thank you for your report - very helpful for those of us always searching for the best prices. Canadian Affair has been sitting in my "favorites" list and referred to whenever I'm checking flights from Vancouver to the UK. I will take your advice and steer clear from now on - I'd rather pay a bit more for peace of mind on international flights!

By the way, I think it would a good idea if you would post your report on the Europe board as well - that is where I was first informed about "Canadian Affair".

Best regards,

joxxxxx we used Zoom on a Toronto-Glasgow trip and were happy. The premium economy service was nice. Furthermore I have read no complaints about them here. They are a small airline so you could have problems with flight changes because a plane is not where it needs to be but that can happen with large airlines too. We normally use Air Canada to the UK because we normally go to London were AC has the best flight times.

I think a Bushism applies perfectly here:

"There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again." -U.S. President, George W. Bush

Jo -

Sorry to hear of your travel tribulations using Canadian Affair. I suppose that is one of the risks of booking with a chartered flight. I am booked to fly Zoom at the end of this month.

We are travelling from Calgary to Stansted and on the return flight - Gatwick to Calgary in two weeks time. Final destination being Italy. As another poster pointed out, I was able to get better prices and better connections using Zoom and low cost airlines EasyJet and Ryanair in Europe.

However, I just received a call last week from Zoom. They cancelled the return flight to Calgary. They have a flight departing from the same airport at the same time going to Vancouver. Zoom will pick up the cost of transferring us to Calgary using WestJet. Luckily, we do not lose our premium status for the return flight - we only have the inconvenience of additional time in the air.

Just goes to show you that Zoom also has it's challenges - at least we were given sufficient prior notice, we remain in the same seat class as originally purchased at no extra cost.

I can agree with Jo about Canadian UNfair! My husband and I were booked to fly out to Calgary on a one way flight, as we are moving out there.
We had booked the flight and two weeks car hire, through Canadian Affair, and were set to fly out last month. We arrived at the airport and checked in. As we were waiting to go through to departures, we recieved a sudden phone call to say that my mother in law, who was in hospital recieving treatment for leukaemia, had taken a sudden turn for the worse, and that we should get to the hospital quickly! My sister kindly sorted out getting our luggage back whilst our friends took us to the hospital. Sadly my mother in law died the following week. We contacted Canadian Affair, and had fully accepted that we had lost the money for our flights, as the website states that they are non refundable, and also the fact that we had checked in, only to have to leave suddenly, we didn't really expect anything else. The car hire was a different issue though, as we thought we may be able to pay an admin fee to get our booking changed to a later date when we could use it.
We were told quite bluntly that this too was totally non refundable, even in these very sad circumstances. So we contacted National Car rental in Calgary, who Canadian Affair had booked our car hire for us with. They couldn't have been sweeter, and said that they would honour our car hire voucher, but would have to check with C A that they would in turn pay them for it. They called us back, astonished at C A attitude, and said that they would not be paid a penny for the voucher if they accepted it! So basically C A have taken our money, not incurred a penny in costs to National (as confirmed by National themselves!!!) and will not help us out one bit! National car rental by the way, said that if we had booked direct with them, they would have not even charged us an admin fee for changing our dates in these circumstances, and were extremely sorry that we had not booked direct with them! Well so were we!
So, we are now flying out tomorrow with Air Canada, they may be more expensive, but boy do they know how to treat their customers!
As for C A, I will not give in, and will continue to protest as to how unfair they are being. They even had the gall to say that we shouldn't have cancelled within 7 days! If only we looked in our crystal ball!!! They also said that we could claim it back off our insurance. Sadly, because my mother in law was ill at the time of booking, our insurance was invalid!!!

Dear all
Just a further update with the Canadian Affair saga.

Our flight out with Thomas Cook was delayed by 3 hours due to a security alert at Manchester Airport (no fault of the airline at all).

We ended up missing the ferry to Nanaimo from downtown Vancouver and ended up having to pay for a taxi to Horseshoe Bay and then getting the ferry to Depature Bay and then another taxi to downtown Nanaimo. Not a great start to the holiday and a fair bit of additional expense.

The flight home (which as you recall was the rescheduled flight with the changed seats) with My Travel airways didn't land until an hour after we were due to depart. They quickly cleaned the plane and we boarded about 45mins later.

Well what a surprise, it wasn't the type of plane we had been promised. There was no separate premium cabin, just regular seats (admittedly with good legroom), no seatback TVs etc. The seating was in a 3, 3, 3 configuration so the "premium passengers" had been allocated 2 people for each block of three seats with an empty seat in the middle. They also handed out portable DVD players if you wanted one.

Given the late take off it appeared that all the "stuff" for the flight (blankets, pillows, food etc)had just been shoved into whichever locker etc was free and the staff spent the flight between Vancouver and Calgary just constantly looking for things and carrying boxes up and down the plane.

We landed in Calgary the passengers there got on and then we waited, and waited and waited as it appeared the ground crew were not happy with something with the plane. After about an hour the captain put on the fasten seatbelt signs and we sat there for at least another hour with no information. Passengers were not allowed to get up to use the toilet or anything.

Eventually we took off, but everything about the service was out of kilter - we didn't get anything to eat for six hours into the flight.

We managed to make up some time and landed into Manchester about one and a half hours late. Then we waited for our bags - yes the priority baggage service proved to be as good as the rest of the flight home. By the time our bags came out there were only 20 people left from our plane - we had waited over an hour from the plane landing and at least 40 mins from the first bags from our flight appearing on the carousel.

We wrote to Canadian Affair with our complaints - we have not had either a reply or any money refunded.

Canadian Affair are obviously not bothered about customer service or even repeat business. We have spent over £5000 on three holidays with them in the past four years. You would think they would want to keep us as loyal customers!