My favorite part of flying Air Canada Business Class is how long they wait to prepare the cabin for landing. I often find myself traveling between Vancouver to Toronto. I take advantage of it the most when traveling between Toronto and Vancouver. To maximize time in Toronto, I am often on the 6.30am departure that gets me into Vancouver before 9am. This allows me to go straight to work, so sleep is of essence on this flight.
10 Minutes Before Landing
This is a picture of me, in bed, on my way to Paris, 10 minutes prior to landing.
On short overnight flights to Europe, or morning flights to Vancouver, this allows me to maximize my sleep on the plane. On my early morning commute to Vancouver, I might only sleep at midnight. Having the alarm go off at 4.30am to catch my 6.30am flight means I’m always a bit tired as I get on the plane. Luckily, after breakfast, I recline my seat and sleep all the way through, until about 10 minutes prior to landing.
10 minutes prior to landing is when I hear the ding, the announcement to put your seat back upright, in preparation for landing. That’s when the cabin crew spring into action, asking all the passengers to please prepare the cabin for landing. This is in contrast to our counterparts in Asia. In Asia, 10 minutes prior to landing, even the cabin crew is buckled in for landing for their own safety.
Everything is great, until there is an issue
On one of my recent flights to Toronto, my seat recline functionality was broken. It took about 10 minutes for the cabin crew to get my seat into a fully reclined position. I thought, they would wake me up 20 minutes prior to landing. This would give them enough time to prepare my seat for landing.
Except, this was my seat, 8 minutes before landing…
Conclusion
In the odd scenario, when things go wrong, things might be terrible. However, in most situations, I am incredibly thankful for Air Canada maximizing the sleep of it’s passengers in Business Class. It must be quite stressful for the crew to have cabin ready, within 2 minutes of the sound in the cabin, however, Air Canada have done it successfully, every single time I’ve flown with them in Business Class. Even today, my favorite part of flying Air Canada Business Class, is maximizing my sleep prior to landing.
