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Vegan Air Canada passenger stunned at lack of airline meals

Vegan Air Canada passenger stunned at lack of airline meals

A woman was left stunned and annoyed after she ordered several vegan meals on a plane – but was served nothing more than a bottle of water during meal service.

Miriam Porter, a travel blogger who goes by the TikTok handle ‘the kind traveller’, was on an Air Canada flight traveling from Toronto, Canada to Frankfurt, Germany.

In a now viral clip that has amassed almost a million views, Miriam explained she ordered several vegan meals during the more than 10-hour flight, but was left hungry after claiming to be served nothing but water.

“POV: You are on an Air Canada flight for over ten hours and order vegan meals,” her post begins.

She then shares footage from the flight showing her first ‘meal’ being a bottle of water.

For “meal 2” she showed a napkin with nothing on it.

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Miriam was eventually given some food – though not part of the proper meal service.

Instead, a flight attendant nabbed a makeshift meal for her from business class.

“Shout out to the kind flight attendant that got me fruit & dinner rolls from business class,” she captioned the clip.

“I love fruit but also like entire meals!” she pointedly added.

Air Canada has a selection of ‘special meals’ that passengers can order in advance. It varies from vegetarian to diabetic, kosher and vegan meal options.

“Special meals are available in all classes of service on all flights where a meal service is offered (except on flights offering Air Canada Bistro service),” its site states.

“We won’t be able to guarantee that your special meal request can be accommodated if it’s submitted less than 24 hours before the first flight in your itinerary.”

However, Miriam said her order was placed “well in advance and confirmed (many times)”.

“This has happened many times sadly. I always preorder in advance and bring my own food in case. But this time it was impossible,” she said.

Her clip has attracted hundreds of comments from users who asked why she just didn’t bring her own food this time.

“I always bring my own food in case but I was on a 24-hour delay and couldn’t make food to bring,” she explained.

Air Canada states: “You may bring your own snacks and food on board, or purchase meals and beverages at the airport before your flight – just make sure to purchase beverages after you’ve passed through security and take into consideration any limitations on bringing food through US pre-clearance when traveling to the US.”

Miriam described the situation as “annoying”.

“Especially since it was day two of trying to get home with little food. But I’m back so a happy ending,” she said.

Miriam added that it took her two days to get home from Berlin.

Her clip prompted others to share their horror food stories, with one woman saying she was served a “small bun with three slices of zucchini” during a long-haul flight.

Another said they were served “lettuce with six cold mushrooms on top” during their flight.

One woman said she was given “chicken on my vegan pre-booked menu”.

Others said they often had to fill up on the bread rolls and snacks such as pretzels and hummus.

News.com.au has contacted Air Canada for comment.

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Air Canada revokes staffer’s flying privileges for two years over complaint

Air Canada revokes staffer's flying privileges for two years over complaint

An airline staffer has been banned from flying for two years after her daughter complained about a lack of customer service when trying to board a flight.

The daughter, who wishes not to be named, told Business Insider she had bought a ticket using Air Canada flying privileges given to her by her mother.

However, after allegedly experiencing poor customer service by gate staff, she filed a complaint with the airline, having also copied in media outlets.

The daughter’s act led to the airline not only revoking her standby flying privileges, but that too of her 62-year-old administrator mother for two years.

Standby tickets allow airline employees to fly anywhere for a fraction of the normal cost, something that had attracted the woman’s mother to the job.

According to Insider, an email sent to the employee suggested her daughter had misrepresented herself as a revenue-generating customer.

“I had a really like sickening feeling when my mother told me what they did to her,” the woman told the publication.

“It’s one thing for me to be reprimanded, but it’s totally different for my actions impacting my mum.”

The woman’s mother, who has fears over losing her job, approached the union who reportedly advised her nothing could be done and that apologizing could help in reducing the penalty.

An Air Canada spokesperson told the outlet that employee travel is a “special privilege”.

“[It is] a unique and generous perk of working for an airline that comes with responsibilities which the overwhelming majority of employees and families understand and value,” the spokesperson said.

“We take feedback about our services seriously. In fact, we undertook an investigation into the complaint lodged, and subsequently found facts which did not align with what was presented.”

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Qantas travelers faced massive delays due to IT glitch at Melbourne airport

Qantas travelers faced massive delays due to IT glitch at Melbourne airport

Qantas is battling to deal with nightmare queues at Melbourne Airport this morning after a nationwide computer outage grounded flights on Sunday evening.

Travelers looking to jet from the Victorian capital to Sydney today were met with huge lines snaking all the way to the international terminal as the airline struggled to deal with the “domino effect” caused by the IT glitch.

“(The queue) snakes all the way back pretty much to the international terminal,” Today reporter Christine Ahern said.

“On top of this, there’s a fairly long queue for the service desk as well because there are three canceled flights to Sydney. So, people are trying to be rebooked on other flights.”

According to the carrier, the issues began at 2.30pm on Sunday, with at least a dozen flights affected.

By Monday morning, several people had taken to Twitter to share angry messages about their flights being cancelled.

The latest issue to hit the embattled airline has also led to renewed calls for CEO Alan Joyce to stand down.

Hello @Qantas. Again flight cancellation W*F. ‘We are sorry we had to cancel your flight QF417 from Sydney at 06:45 on Mon 1 Aug’. Alan Joyce please resign,” wrote a Twitter user.

Qantas forced to increase costs

Recently, Qantas was also forced to cut several flights from their schedule, while hiking up the price of domestic flights due to higher fuel costs.

On Thursday, the airline said they had been pushed to “rebalance capacity and fares,” so they could increase the number of passengers flying on the remaining flights.

Prices saw an increase of up to 2.6 per cent, adding around an extra $10 per ticket. This comes as jet fuel has seen increases of 28 per cent throughout 2022, soaring at prices of around A$208 a barrel.

Speaking to 2GB’s Ben Fordham, Qantas Domestic and International CEO Andrew David said that flights would be reduced over July and August and apologized to customers.

“We are the national carrier, people have high expectations of us, we have high expectations of ourselves and clearly over the last few months we have not been delivering what we did pre-COVID,” he said.

“We have reduced some of our flying this month and we’re planning to do the same next month, recognizing the operation pressures we have.”

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Qantas nightmare: Australian traveller’s horror overseas flight saga

Qantas nightmare: Australian traveller's horror overseas flight saga

As I found myself stranded in Athens airport, surrounded by unsympathetic airline staff and forced to splash out an extra $2700 on new flights back home, I couldn’t help but feel this all could have been avoided.

Like thousands of other Aussies, I too had a nightmare experience flying with Qantas.

It’s amazing what can happen to a beloved national airline when it sacks 9000 staff, outsources thousands of jobs, moves customer service teams overseas and hands out millions in bonuses to executives.

My nightmare all started when I fell for the trap that is ‘frequent flyer flights’.

I applied for a credit card back in May (disastrous idea), splurged on a new laptop to secure 120,000 bonus Qantas points and booked my first overseas holiday in years.

There was a slight catch, my flights to Europe were from Adelaide – but given I had spent less than $1000 on taxes in addition to my points I thought I had scored a bargain.

I called up the Qantas helpline in a bid to see if they could help me book connecting flights from Sydney to Adelaide – mistake 1.

Instead of booking me a simple flight home from Adelaide to Sydney, they REPLACED my overseas return leg from Athens to Adelaide.

It wasn’t until a few days later that I noticed my overseas leg had vanished and been simply replaced with the domestic flight.

I spent over five hours that night on hold as I desperately tried to explain what had happened to call center workers who struggled to even speak to me let alone understand my complaint.

This is of course not their fault, they are doing the best they can in difficult circumstances. The blame lies with an airline that sacrificed quality, local customer service for cheaper labor.

Just one Qantas call center is located in Australia – and that Hobart team specifically services the airline’s premium clients (the big spenders).

I would wait two hours on hold, before finally getting onto someone – who would then spend 30 minutes attempting to understand my issue, only for them to hang up on me.

After over five hours I finally got onto someone who told me they could no longer get me on my original flight (Athens to Doha to Adelaide) as it was now full.

Qantas has since informed me that the domestic leg wasn’t ticketed correctly – which resulted in my overseas flight being cancelled.

With my trip approaching and still no return leg, I took matters into my own hands and booked another flight via Vietnam.

With so few options available I had to book the Vietnam to Sydney leg with a different airline – Jetstar.

I called up Qantas to make sure that I would be able to get a transit visa at the airport in Ho Chi Minh as I would need to check my bags in and out again during my short four-hour layover between flights.

A spokesperson told me there would be no problems getting a visa at the airport – mistake 2, blindly trusting Qantas again.

Three weeks of blissful travel – visiting my best mates in picturesque Switzerland, a romantic trip in Santorini – finished with me being stuck in Athens after Qantas’ advice was swiftly shot down.

Airline staff refused to let me on my flight as I had no visa – despite the assurances of Qantas it would be fine.

Ironically, the only option presented to me was to spend almost 2000 Euros to get back onto the Athens-Doha-Adelaide flight that I had originally booked months ago – only for Qantas to inexplicably cancel without telling me and then assure me there were no seats on the flight.

Turns out there were seats on the flight Qantas.

And while a seedy room above an Adelaide pub wasn’t exactly how I pictured closing out my trip – I was just glad to get home and be done with travelling.

Qantas’ statement:

“Unfortunately, it appears that the additional domestic flight was not ticketed correctly when it was added to your booking which led to the Qatar Airways booking being automatically canceled by their system.

“Our agent was unable to secure you another seat on that Qatar flight as there were no more reward seats available on the flight.

Our contact centers are not trained to provide visa advice, rather they should direct you to the relevant consulate, and we apologize that this process wasn’t followed.

“We are following up your experience with a full review to help prevent it happening again.”

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