• Flight Segment: YYJ-YYZ
  • Aircraft Flown: Airbus A220-300 (C-GJXY Leg 1), Airbus A321-200 (C-GJWO Leg 2)
  • Distance Travelled: 5,333 kilometers (3,314 miles) total YYJ-YYZ-FLL
  • Cost: $443.50 each, $0.083/km, or $0.33/km for the four of us
  • Class of Service: Economy Comfort Fare

This will be the first of several blogs from our trip aboard Royal Caribbean’s Odyssey of the Seas and adventure down to Peru and Colombia. This blog with both flights combined came out to be quite long, so this initial flight review was one of two flights getting us down to Fort Lauderdale.

Preface

We booked an 8-night cruise in Spring of 2022, for Spring Break 2023 with cruise fares at the time being very compelling. We started looking at and booking airfare soon after, as we were booking our return leg on points (blog on that flight to come, too). The outbound flight was actually our last flight we needed to book for this trip, and I was somewhat satisfied with pricing during a seat sale in mid-November 2022.

Tonight’s flight would eventually equipment swap to a 3-year old A220-300.

There was actually special offers on Flex and Comfort fares, and for a few dollars more, we got all the perks of an Air Canada Comfort fare. It worked out to about $150 more for the all of us for Comfort fare, and you get a few perks that you’ll see really make it worth it.

Remember to always review your safety cards, numerous incidents since the restart of travel show how quickly a routine flight can quickly turn into an emergency.

First off, you earn 115% SQM and aeroplan points on the booking, compared to the 50% of standard economy fare. Everyone knows I’m pretty particular with where we sit, and seat selection with Air Canada comes with a cost per person per the norm these days, Comfort fare includes standard AND preferred seat selection, meaning we can pick from any economy seat included. The fare is also fully refundable and changeable with no fees, so should we have found a cheaper fare, we could easily have cancelled and jumped on a better deal. (Hint: that didn’t happen and fares kept going up). Finally, you also get a free alcoholic beverage onboard, an extra perk I didn’t actually know about until our second leg.

Legroom in preferred seats is fantastic!

Considering this was only 4 months away at time of booking, I was pretty surprised at the amount of changes over the next few months. First, flight times were changed which had us alter our second leg too. Then it went from a daytime eastbound flight to a completely red eye flight, and changed from an Air Canada Rouge, to an Air Canada mainline A220, the latter change I was pretty excited about though. So while we were now arriving a day later then planned because of the change to a red-eye, it did save us an extra night of hotel before our cruise so I took it.

The A220 boasts amazing performance and economics and was specifically designed by Bombardier to make these thinner long routes profitable and affordable.

Check In and Airport Experience

I do want to note, for all the complaints about Air Canada, their app is probably one of the best out there, and I have WestJet, Flair, Emirates, Turkish, Lufthansa, JetBlue, Qatar, and more on my phone. The functionality and features are really nice, and it helped make the online check in process smooth and easy, and nice provides the electronic boarding pass. I’m looking at you WestJet, why do I need to download each boarding pass individually when checking in on the app?

Some of the features I best love about the Air Canada app: you get a plethora of information related to your flight like seat map showing how full it is, standby lists for upgrades, the menu, what entertainment will be on board and WiFi availability, and you can easily see the inbound flight status, especially useful if your flight is delayed (I use that combined with Flightradar for tracking).

I won’t go into too much detail about our home airport of Victoria International (YYJ) as I’ve reviewed it on a number of occasions already. Arriving was smooth and easy, and we had bags dropped off and we were airside fairly quickly. One of the major drawbacks of our little airport though is that for evening flights after say 1700hrs, Tim Horton’s closes and your only option is the rather expensive Spinnakers airside.

Spinnakers has good but expensive options.

One of the things that really makes air travel with kids easier is teaching them and involving them in the security process. By this point, the kids are fairly accustomed to what they need to do at security: all electronics out and into a family electronics bin, bags up and onto the bins for x-ray, nothing in pockets and sweaters generally into the bins too. Maddy in particular is really helpful with getting things organized airside so we can move on.

The upstairs waiting area is comfortable with lots of charging ports. There’s also a small kids play area.

YYJ currently has 4 jet bridges, and usually you board turboprops via the ground level gates and jets on the upper level overhead jet bridges. There is a planned expansion to the terminal in the near and mid-future which would include adding additional overhead jet bridges, extending runway 09/27, and expanding the baggage collection area.

Our A220 pulling up to stand after its inbound flight from Toronto. A sleek looking jet with huge Pratt and Whitney GTF engines.

Boarding

Our aircraft, an Airbus A220-300 (Reg C-GJXY) arrived on time. For those not aware, the A220 was formerly known as the C-Series, a program that nearly ended up bankrupting Bombardier after a trade dispute launched by Boeing. The program sold to Airbus who renamed it the A220, and has revived into an incredibly popular aircraft type.

Air Canada is the only Canadian operator of the A220, most are based at YYZ and YUL so we don’t see many out west.

Marketed as a regional jet, this designed and built in Canada is hailed as a super-efficient short-medium haul aircraft. Indeed, the A220 is capable of a max range of 6,000 kms and designed to serve thin routes that wouldn’t otherwise be profitable, it has amazing performance that was designed specifically to meet the challenges of markets like Canada’s aviation sector.

I really like AC’s safety video, it showcases various locations around Canada and is really nicely put together.

Air Canada boards by zones like many other airlines, with pre-boarding, then zone 1 (business class and super elites), followed by zones 2 to whatever. We boarded with the call for children 5 and under, and found our way to our seats 20A/C and 21A/C.

I really appreciate that AC keeps inflight entertainment screens on most of their aircraft.

Cabin Impressions

Stepping onboard we were greeted by Air Canada’s latest cabin, a 12 seat business class cabin in a 2-2 configuration with recliner-style seats, and a 120-seat economy class laid out in a family-friendly 2-3 configuration. The side we sat on was the two abreast, and so no middle seat or seat stranger to contend with.  

Really nice initial impression like massive legroom in our preferred seats.

Jacob was with me for the first flight. We have to have the kids alternate who sits with who otherwise he’ll never give up sitting with mom. As we normally do, we had two rows of seats, which worked great with this seating configuration. It’s a bit randomly placed halfway down the plane, but rows 20 and 21 are non-exit row preferred seats, which offer more legroom, over 34 inches in our case. The A220 seats are among the widest in the industry with 18 inches of width. All seats come with seatback entertainment screens which were high-definition and highly responsive. Paired with the seatback entertainment is a USB-A and C, along with your headphone jack.

The windows are huge on the A220.
Jacob fell asleep before we even took off.
USB-A, C, and headphone jacks are under your IFE screen.
The interactive moving map is really nice.

The overhead bins are large and fit lots of luggage, being able to hold roller bags on their side. LED mood lights fill the space, and the A220 windows are huge, allowing lots of natural light in. All-in-all, the A220 instantly became my favourite aircraft, and that’s not just the biased Canadian in me speaking, and was an incredibly comfortable.

The cabin feels spacious and mood lighting is a really nice touch.

Departure and Inflight Service

Departure was more or less on time, the late night take off while wet, was quite a nice climb out over Metro Vancouver. Once we were above 10,000 feet, the crew was quickly in the cabin to provide a drink and snack service. While there was a buy-on-board menu available, they didn’t ask if we wanted items from it. Aside from extra legroom, there is no further perks to preferred seats compared to Delta Comfort plus. We didn’t want anything anyways, and Jacob had actually fallen asleep between the short taxi time and take off.

The A220 seats are the widest in its class and Jacob was swimming in that space.

The lights were soon turned off for passengers to rest. However, and I commend the crew for their dedication to hydration, on this short 4.5 hour redeye flight, the crew came around twice offering water. Each time, they increased the cabin lighting in a deep blue colour, so while not overly disturbing, you’d definitely notice and wake up if you’re a light sleeper like me (of note though, Jacob slept through until landing).

I enjoyed playing around with the IFE moving map, I did this for too long rather then sleep!

I’d prefer to avoid short redeye flights with the kids, however, this worked well for our itinerary, but be forewarned, we were very jet-lagged when we arrived at our hotel in Fort Lauderdale in the afternoon later that day.

None of these menu options were avaliable from YYJ-YYZ.

YYZ Arrival and Final Thoughts

We came in for an uneventful landing into Toronto’s Pearson International Airport. I really enjoyed this flight but being such a short red-eye, I definitely wouldn’t recommend it, especially if your kids don’t take jetlag very well. Fortunately, our kids aren’t the cranky sleepy type so we lucked out, but that didn’t change how tired we all were.

View out our window as the sun rises on our approach into YYZ.

The crew were lovely, attentive, and definitely hardworking. They were frequently in the cabin checking in if anyone wanted water. For our first time on the Canadian built A220, I really enjoyed it, the 2-3 configuration is way nicer way to fly, the seats are among the widest in class, and the windows are massive. The composite materials allow for better pressurization and humidity, and thus reduces jetlag a bit. It’s disappointing Air Canada is the only Canadian carrier that flies the A220, but I would love to try out the A220 on a daytime flight to better try out the onboard amenities.  

Once in the air, we put the armrest up and let Jacob sleep on me, seatbelt stays buckled up!

Thanks for reading! I would really appreciate your support by signing up to be notified when new blogs are posted, and follow us on Instagram at Go.FamilyTravel. Stay tuned for part two of this flight, connecting down to Fort Lauderdale on an Air Canada A321-200! I’ll post that Oct 20th and plan on posting blogs from this trip every one to two weeks.

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