[ACnohuman]

I have an extremely unpleasant experience with Air Canada recently.

My mother in-law passed away in Hongkong last month and the funeral is scheduled on August 19, 2016. We purchased 4 tickets flying Air Canada, departing on August 17, through a travel agent. We are told that a bunch of seats at the front of the plane is held by Air Canada and not released for assignment until 24 hours before the flight.

I called the airline reservation hotline and asked for their help to assign seats earlier so that my wife can have a peace of mind that she can attend the funeral for sure. We are not seeking preferred seats that the airlines can get more money from. All we are asking is a seat assignment to seats that we fully paid for. To my disappointment, all I heard from their representative is a repeat playback of the rule that those seats are held for selection by “Elite” customers first. I asked her to act as a human being, not a machine, to express the sympathy in this particular situation to by-pass the rules. She talked to her supervisor and came back with the same re-statement of rules. Same rules I got from replies from customer relations too.

Air Canada is the only “national” airline for Canadians and they offered a discounted bereavement fare for Canadians but is not helping Canadians to get a seat paid at normal fare.