This was the start of a one week trip to Hong Kong and China. I had a one way ticket from Atlanta to Hong Kong via Montreal and Vancouver on Air Canada and a return on Qatar Airways via Doha.
Flight routing
- 1AC8658 ATL-YUL CRJ-900 in Economy
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5QR755 DOH-ATL 777-300ER in Economy
With a scheduled takeoff time of 09:45, I arrived at the airport about two and a half hours before. The international terminal wasn't very busy with only a few other international carriers' desks open. The Delta desks were busier, however.
I dropped my bag off and headed to security but not before seeing another Air Canada Express CRJ-900. This one would be heading to Toronto-Pearson.
TSA didn't take very long, and I was soon able to take the Plane Train to Concourse E to stay in the American Express Centurion Lounge.
I would arrive at Gate F14 in the international terminal 30 minutes before departure.
C-FDJZ would be the plane taking me to Montreal today. 18.8 years old, this plane was delivered in August of 2005 and had been flying for Air Canada its entire life.
Boarding started on-time and I made my way onto the plane in Group 3.
Air Canada Express's CRJ-900s are equipped with 76 seats with 12 seats in Business in a 1-2 configuration and 64 in Economy.
The seats had 31" of pitch.
Every seat came equipped with an infotainment screen and a USB-A port. There aren't many regional jets with seat back screens out there. A flight attendant handed out earbuds before pushback.
The safety video was screened on the screens and pushback started at 09:54.
Unfortunately, we didn't end up getting far after leaving the gate. At 10:15, the pilots announced that they had to reroute our flight path due to the inclement weather. This was not a fast process but we ended up moving again at 10:26. Unfortunately, by this time we were very far back in the line for takeoff, and the pilots said we wouldn't have enough fuel to idle until takeoff, so we had to pull to a stand and refuel. This process ended up taking over an hour, but we finally departed the stand at 12:03. During the delay, the seatbelt sign was turned off and flight attendants came by with water and granola bars.
Takeoff was from Runway 9L.
The view above the clouds was clear as usual.
To begin the inflight service, drinks were first, followed by the same granola bars that we had on the ground. I got a ginger ale.
The entertainment screens on the CRJ-900 are nice to have, but they are very slow to respond. They are touchscreens however, so you don't have to control with a remote in the armrest for instance.
The inflight map could not be changed and would cycle through many different views in both French and English.
These were the options available on the screen.
The selections were more limited than on a mainline plane, but they were fine for this two hour flight.
View from the back of the cabin.
We started our descent into Montreal around 20 minutes before arrival.
Enter text here…
View of the international terminal after arrival in Montreal.
I saw this Air Algerie A330-200 which I thought was very cool.
We finally arrived at the gate at 14:20. We ended up parking at the end of the US-departures part of the terminal and deplaned via a ramp. It was a long walk to customs and connections but I was in the departures area after 20 minutes for my connection to Vancouver.
Thanks for sharing this FR. With multiple legs, you are lucky the delay leaving ATL didn’t affect the YVR-HKG connection. A delay after leaving the gate and then having to go back to refuel is annoying, but it sounds like the crew at least handled it as well as possible offering drinks/snack and letting people use the lavatory. AC is a decent hard product with their IFE, the moving map is still better than the low-res one you would get with a BYOD streaming IFE.
They don’t charge for these anymore? I’m also surprised that they brought snacks back. They were very stingy on drinks and didn’t offer any snacks on my 2022-2023 flights with them. Maybe they are slowly adapting to the US3 standards.
On the connecting flight to Vancouver there were no free snacks handed out, and you had to pay for the earbuds as well. Maybe it's different on Express.
Nice to see one of your reports again. Always well-written with the perfect amount of detail! As you mention, it's very uncommon to have seatback IFE on a regional jet, but these are definitely getting old. Too bad about the delay, but good thing it didn't affect the connection in Montreal. I would hate being on a CRJ for 3-4 hours.
Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for the support.
This looks like a fun routing! Can’t wait to hear about longhaul AC as well QR! Exciting stuff!
It’s nice to see there are seatback screens but wow this cabin looks dated! As NGO85 mentioned, it’s nice to receive free earbuds as well.
Sorry to hear about the delay?, but I have to say, that is some great service offering a beverage and snack even if it wasn’t the best. I have been stranded on many flights and only 2 or 3 to my knowledge had cabin crew come around to offer snacks. 7 hours on a plane at LHR 12 years ago has left a sour taste in my mouth. Anyways, great to see they tried to do their best of an unlucky situation.
Ahh blue skies! Lovely
Woahh!! What a beautiful plane! Montreal is quite unique as it has some unusual visitors like this plane and the Tunis Air A330 to name a few.
Thanks for an interesting trip report. While it certainly isn’t fun being stranded on a CRJ for 4 hours, it seems that AC tried the best they could giving out snacks on the ground, or at least better than any other US carrier would. It's a hot take, but AC might be the best North American carrier. At least there was IFE, albeit old…