Air Canada Boeing B777 300ER (77W) North America Layout 2 seat review by R Tilling #27938

Boeing 777-300 Vancouver-London Heathrow 2 Sep 2014

The new business class studio pod is TERRIBLE - narrow, short and ridiculously sized and shaped. It's okay as a seat, but I paid for a good night's sleep. Forget it! I'm 6ft 4 and when the seat turns into a bed, it slides the lower half of your body into a tiny plastic coffin-like box (in the area under the armrests of the two passengers in front) with no room to move your legs at all, and it wasn't long enough for me - so it wasn't humanly possible to lie down!! Hell on earth. As a result, I arrived at LHR tired and irritable, lacking the sleep I had needed and deliberately paid for. The cabin crew was brilliant, but they told me that a lot of other business class passengers had complained about this new seat. It's also difficult to get the seat back up again from a supposed "bed". My seat 2A on C-FIVO was also missing a seat-based flexible reading light. It is a reasonably new aircraft so why on earth was that missing?

Basically, Air Canada has decided to shove more seats in every class onto this aircraft at the expense of comfort and space, and every passenger is short-changed as a result. The 777-300ER that normally takes 359 passengers is being converted to 458 passengers - mine was one of them. The passenger loses. I have read that it is a plan to reduce cost per seat by 15%. It is a total disgrace - avoid this aircraft at all costs. Air Canada used to be a great airline but it is heading downhill. I have sent two emails, two letters to the LHR office and two letters to Calin Rovinescu: the CEO of Air Canada. No reply of any kind has been received to date. Air Canada really doesn't care anymore. If this is the way Air Canada is going, then it's time to change airlines folks.