Air Canada Rouge, Is it really that bad?

[LHT28]

all you need to know about Ac Rouge

http://flyrouge.com/

 

They have

Premium Rouge

Rouge Plus

Rouge

[calliopecruiser]

No, Rouge premium is considered business class for NAmerica and Caribbean. Considered premium economy for international

[em-sk]

Looks like Air Canada is getting rid of the Rogue A319/A321 based in Vancouver. The Vancouver to California flights are switching back to mainline. Sounds like they want to focus the Rogue flights a bit more in Toronto and the rogue aircraft will be moved east while the regular ones will be positioned into Vancouver. Lucky, Toronto.

 

They are still keeping the 767 that operate Vancouver to Hawaii and Vancouver to Osaka Japan as Rogue.

Edited November 21, 2015 by em-sk

[LiftLockCouple]

This not really a knock on Rouge but about what can happen. In this case the very cold weather ( well below 0 Fahrenheit ) contributed to this event. DS1 and his wife are right now sitting at YUL waiting for a make-up flight to FLL for their cruise on Allure departing this afternoon. Last night they flew to YUL from YYZ for a Rouge flight to FLL arriving FLL at midnight. The flight ( AC418 ) from YYZ was delayed about an hour. Their Rouge A321 ( Rou1608 ) couldn't get the door to close and arm properly. After lots of maintenance attempts, no luck, the flight was cancelled. They were sent to a hotel, given a total of $27, and a new flight booked on a 767 for 11am this morning. The scheduled landing in FLL is 230 this afternoon. This is way to close for comfort and they haven't left YUL yet. Our fingers are crossed that nothing else goes wrong and they get to the ship OK. For the record there are lots of other options to book non-stop YYZ to FLL but in their case, the connection at YUL was required. I'm sure that 99 out of 100 times this itinerary goes off without any problem but in this case they have had a big problem. It can happen. Don't fly the day of a cruise unless you absolutely have to.

[calliopecruiser]

Don't fly the day of a cruise unless you absolutely have to.

And always have a back-up plan or extra days if you're connecting in winter through a winter-risky place (like Chicago, NY, Toronto, Montreal etc.)

[LiftLockCouple]

We just came home from Barcelona on Rouge.

The flight left early, arrived early, and the luggage was on the carousel in record time ( two minutes after we got to the carousel ) . The Flight attendants were very professional and provided good care. Rouge has a poor reputation but this flight was excellent. I still hate the entertainment system though. The food......... well what do we really expect eh?? They served a cajun chicken wrap that was made in England from Thailand chicken with a Best before date of 2017. But what the heck, a non-stop flight that was on time ( actually early ) and at Pearson we were in our car an hour after arrival at the gate.

 

This flight was full so apparently there are lots that chose Rouge instead of the options. We knew another couple on the same flight from Nova Scotia, they were content with the flight and service.

[phabric]

We just came home from Barcelona on Rouge.

The flight left early, arrived early, and the luggage was on the carousel in record time ( two minutes after we got to the carousel ) . The Flight attendants were very professional and provided good care. Rouge has a poor reputation but this flight was excellent. I still hate the entertainment system though. The food......... well what do we really expect eh?? They served a cajun chicken wrap that was made in England from Thailand chicken with a Best before date of 2017. But what the heck, a non-stop flight that was on time ( actually early ) and at Pearson we were in our car an hour after arrival at the gate.

 

This flight was full so apparently there are lots that chose Rouge instead of the options. We knew another couple on the same flight from Nova Scotia, they were content with the flight and service.

 

I plan on taking Air Canada from Barcelona to Toronto next June.

 

Did you have regular seats?

[maryann2]

I recently flew AC YVR to YYZ and Rouge from YYZ to FLL.

The Rouge flight from Toronto was actually more comfortable than the one from Vancouver.

Met several people on the flight to FLL who were also doing the Transatlantic on Independence OTS leaving that afternoon.

My reasoning was hotels in Fort Lauderdale were really expensive this year and it would work out cheaper to get a flight to the next port Nassau if we were delayed.

This of course was in May. Not the middle of Winter.

 

Some of the staff were scruffy, needed a comb LOL, but were all polite and friendly.

[GeezerCouple]

A couple of months ago, we were in Vancouver on business, and suddenly needed to get to LA for more meetings before heading home.

I don't remember if Rouge was the only available flight on short notice, or the only available non-stop, or the only one without exhorbitant pricing or what, but that's what we ended up taking.

We were both absolutely dreading it, from everything we were reading, and we had even considered flying on another airline with ridiculously out of the way connections.

 

Maybe it was because of our dreadful expectations, but the flight was not bad at all, thank goodness.

Was it our favorite coach-class flight? Of course not.

But it wasn't even in the running for the "worst of..." list.

 

We aren't sure how it got such a horrible reputation (and we do hope never to find out :eek:)

 

Meanwhile, a week or two earlier, we had a particularly nice AC flight to Vancouver, our first on a Dreamliner. It was a premium economy equivalent, and very comfortable.

[calliopecruiser]

We aren't sure how it got such a horrible reputation (and we do hope never to find out :eek:)

 

In the last 8 or 9 months, Rouge has been renovating and replacing planes in their line, so the experience is not as bad as it was a year or more ago.....still, I think coach sears are still horrible (but upgrading to a preferred seat (extra $) is worthwhile and makes it more like mainline coach).

[RickT]

To those who recently flew Rouge and thought it was OK because it landed on time, your luggage arrived with it, etc, I'm glad you enjoyed it. My issues with Rouge have had nothing to do with Arrival Time, Luggage nor even the food.

 

My issues with Rouge have been lack of leg room, uncomfortable seats, inattentive personnel, a joke of an entertainment system and the overall substandard service provided on a Rouge Flight. I'm further not a fan of Rouge because of how it's generally listed on various travel websites as Air Canada operated by Rouge. When you do a flight search on Air Canada or other travel websites you now need to scroll through pages of Rouge flights to find mainline Air Canada planes or other mainline airlines for often what is less than $50 price difference in flights. At least when I want to avoid Air Transat (or similar) I can just choose to not have those options shown, not so with Rouge.

 

The only benefit of Rouge has been a slight increase in direct flights to overseas destinations. That said I'll still take a connection to avoid Rouge unless the price or convenience of the flight is just too good to ignore.

[LiftLockCouple]

That said I'll still take a connection to avoid Rouge unless the price or convenience of the flight is just too good to ignore.

 

I agree with all of your points. But don't you think that our flight was full , including the two butts in seats that we represented, for exactly your last statement?

 

One consideration is the option on both AT and Rouge to get the premium seating for significantly less than business class or Premium economy on any of the mainline carriers.

 

I know of others, returning to Canada from our cruise that accepted connections on alternatives, including AT for their own reasons. One being that Rouge did not have a flight to / from Barcelona on Monday ( the day the cruise ended ) so they had to chose something else if they wanted to get home on Monday. Of the other choices, one couple flew on United via New York, another on Air Lingus via Dublin, another accepted two connections in Europe then on to Vancouver.

 

We accepted Rouge for what it is, to get the price and non-stop to Toronto on the date we wanted to fly.

If a mainline carrier ( or any carrier ) were prepared to fly us home in 20" wide seats with a 32" or better pitch, great service and entertainment, and non-stop, for the same price, the Rouge flight would have been empty.

 

BTW. I firmly believe that AC has made a marketing blunder by linking Rouge to the Air Canada brand. Now , the main airline and its service is known by the lowest denominator of Rouge.

 

We also flew on Westjet on this trip and it wasn't all that great either. The flight attendant said " get this Boeing going " at least half a dozen times and the entertainment system had very limited selection because we were in the US airspace, give me a break, they have had this problem for years and never done anything about it. The service was not any better than what we experienced on Rouge.

[cocacola86]

We are from Hamilton and usually fly out of Buffalo on Delta if possible

 

 

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[em-sk]

I agree with all of your points. But don't you think that our flight was full , including the two butts in seats that we represented, for exactly your last statement?

 

.....

 

We also flew on Westjet on this trip and it wasn't all that great either. The flight attendant said " get this Boeing going " at least half a dozen times and the entertainment system had very limited selection because we were in the US airspace, give me a break, they have had this problem for years and never done anything about it. The service was not any better than what we experienced on Rouge.

 

The problem WestJet has is they are offering a satellite product with live TV. It points to satellite designed to serve Canada that does not have coverage into the US.

 

I do agree the Air Canada entertainment product is better than WestJet.

[cocacola86]

We flew Westjet to FL and never had a problem with Satellite

 

 

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[RickT]

I agree with all of your points. But don't you think that our flight was full , including the two butts in seats that we represented, for exactly your last statement?

 

 

BTW. I firmly believe that AC has made a marketing blunder by linking Rouge to the Air Canada brand. Now , the main airline and its service is known by the lowest denominator of Rouge.

 

Good points. I partially agree with your first statement but feel that is due to the passenger who doesn't fly much and don't know/understand/care about the difference between Air Canada mainline and Rouge. I fell into that category when I first flew Rouge thinking "how bad can it be, it's Air Canada". Only time will tell if people will choose to fly Rouge a second time after experiencing it first hand? I know you can pay for Premium economy, but if you do that the cost of the Rouge flight often exceeds the cost of mainline airlines.

 

As far as a Marketing blunder I agree. Overall I am happy with Air Canada but to lump in Rouge it devalues the brand and has tainted my opinion of Air Canada. As I said earlier, I believe it is a blunder to have no way to remove Rouge flights from the Air Canada flight search.