WARNING Air Canada - BEWARE if your name ends in the letter M !

[mummymeister]

So I know this is a bit of cryptic title but bear with. We have just flown with Air Canada and one of our party had a first name that ends in an M - for example Adam. Because of a glitch on the Air Canada booking system the correct name will be shown as Adam on everything apart from your boarding pass. When you print this off at home it will show as Ada because the computer thinks the M stands for mister (no I have no idea why either) Anyway the upshot of this error is that you cannot then do auto check in for all of your party and have to join a massive queue for the check in support desk. We were delayed by well over an hour each way. I have challenged Air Canada about this and their response is that they are well aware of the computer glitch and are "hoping to sort it by the Autumn, or maybe longer" If you or anyone in your party has a first name ending in M then be aware that you might be caught out by this. Lots of families were queueing for the check in support desks for this reason and quite a few had to really rush for their flights. At the return airport there were 65 families in front of us all queueing for the Air Canada support desk. Please share this info with family and friends and if you tweet perhaps you could ask them why this is the case as I am still waiting for a satisfactory answer.

Huh. Rando

I wonder what would happen if you used Adamm instead of Adam? Would you end up with the correct name?

twotabbycats - the problem if you did that would be that your name on the booking form and your entry visa into Canada wouldn't match so they would throw it out at that stage. It needs someone with computing skills in the company to sort this out - cant be that difficult can it?

LonginesPrime - I was hoping that by posting this it would stop other people missing flights/being stressed and almost missing flights like we did. No one allows an hour extra to check in and it made the trip really not enjoyable.

Air Canada are the worst airline with the worst immigration policy/queue I know. I flew with them about 20 times, always had a problem. So this does not surprise me!

The M is short for Monsieur - and as a bi lingual country it would be commonly used in Canada. Really it can't be such a problem to sort out or is all Canadian bureaucracy crippled by this issue?

Apologies OP if you thought I was calling you a rando - it was my poor attempt at humour (removing the 'm') as in 'well, who'd have thought it? How random.'

I'll get my coat...

put your coat back Longines - it did make me smile!!

Bekabeech - the person affected in our group was a woman so yes M is short for monsieur but its the letter at the end of a womans name. So the ticket shows for example - Smith, Miriam and the boarding pass Smith, Miria with no idea where the last M has gone. its bizarre.

Air Canada gave the impression that absolutely no shits were given about the inconvenience this caused our group. They were very much "oh yeah its a computer glitch we all know about it, will get it fixed soon but cant say when" sort of attitude. but I guess that's because its not them that had to queue for over an hour at each airport. Going out we had to run to our gate.

WendyCope - Lesson learnt. we wont be going with them again. I had always thought they were one of the better airlines but honestly had better customer service from the budget airlines just recently.