It is the first time I will be flying to Canada in many, many years, and I am wondering what airlines are the nicest to fly with.

Although the least expensive economy option would be great, I don’t know if there is a difference between what that is like on Air Canada as opposed to BA as opposed to Air Transat or whomever.

Someone else is paying, and they have asked me to book something within $1000 CDN, but I would like to be as comfortable as possible.

Any thoughts?

You would struggle to get a BA ticket for that.

IME BA is generally better than KLM, KLM is better than United.

Have a look at https://www.seatguru.com/ it give a lot of good information on legroom etc.

If you’re in Economy, it can be worth to pay the extra for the seats with the extra leg room, can make a big difference.

Parents had a flight booked with Air Transat but due to unforeseen circumstances they had to cancel. They tried get it rebooked well in advance for another date, even accepting a probable fee for it, but they flat said no. Lost the money. Yet almost certainly they resold that flight and profited from it.

KLM are shocking at luggage retention!

What about Rouge, Air Canada doing the cheap(ish) and cheerful option.

Seat Guru is indeed awesome. I use it on almost all my bookings, the exception being those where familiarity means I know where I want to be!

Flew with Canadian Affair a few years ago, half the price of BA etc, aircraft were leased from Thomas Cook, short haul cattle craft, crampt and uncomfortable, but I kept cool by wafting my face with the £600 I saved.

IME BA is generally better than KLM, KLM is better than United.

Walking across would be better than United 😉

I flew Air Canada a lot a few years ago when we had a big project in Ottawa. Started in very old planes with frankly two few engines for long haul, but by the end (2 years later) new planes/refits/etc. We had a mega deal with them as we were going so often. Their business class was pretty nice when we did get an upgrade.

A mate went to whistler with one of the cheap carriers (can’t remember which one) and had his knees wedged into his ears for 8 hours…

Air Canada was decent when i used it

[quoteParents had a flight booked with Air Transat but due to unforeseen circumstances they had to cancel. They tried get it rebooked well in advance for another date, even accepting a probable fee for it, but they flat said no. Lost the money. Yet almost certainly they resold that flight and profited from it. [/quote]
There are 2 ticket types. Cheaper with no ability to cxl/change and a more expensive option that allows changes for a fee.
Travel insurance is also a must and best put in place as soon as you book your flights.
Every airline is allowed to oversell seats by some 10% I believe and they rely on no-shows to balance this out. Airlines are often actively offering incentives fornpassengers to fly a different schedule when their over sales backfire.

This year, BA and AC have had baggage/bike delays as well as flight delays in excess of 4 hours. Nothing yet with transat.
Transats seat leg room is as good or better than BA /AC cattle class.
Its no frills but well priced.

BearBack – Member 
There are 2 ticket types. Cheaper with no ability to cxl/change and a more expensive option that allows changes for a fee.
Travel insurance is also a must and best put in place as soon as you book your flights.

Much of this wasn’t made clear to them at the time (booked via Expedia, who wiped their hands of it also saying it’s the airline’s responsibility). Travel insurance became a problem as they weren’t told there’s an upper age limit. They did get different travel insurance which covered cancellation but on claiming they were told no. As the reason wasn’t a life and death situation (but wasn’t their choice either, the thing they were going for had been cancelled), then insurance said no.

Personally I think the situation is wrong. The airline is still profiting from your cancellation as it’s guaranteed to be resold on a busy flight, especially when cancelled well in advance, while they walk away with your money. Seat paid for twice basically and one customer loses out.

WestJet (not flown myself I think I’d struggle with the leg room)

If you are flying to Vancouver it’s sometimes cheaper to fly to Seattle and drive up.

+1 Canadian Affair to Vancouver for less than £300 5 years ago, horrible cramped dreadful service but at that price you can put up with it. Oh and we stopped at Calgary for people to get off 😯 some idiot thought we had arrived at Vancouver and got off, utter chaos, and a delay of about 2 hours. This was the start of my cycle ride down the West Coast so was mad with excitement.

We flew Air Transat to Vancouver at the end of June. The price, when we booked around xmas time, was about 2/3rds the price of Air Canada who’d we’d flown with previously. Apart from the ‘snack type’ food they give us it was fine. The plane was new, the seats comfortable and it had a modern ‘entertainment’ system.
They market themselves as a Leisure Airline, as opposed to budget, and are far from the charter or Easy Jet type airline model. I’d fly with them again certainly.