Frustrations of dealing with Air Canada (Part 387)

I may have mentioned that we are heading off to Portugal at some time later in the year. We booked a flight from Toronto to Lisbon for a very reasonable price – and simply had to join the dots and get ourselves to Toronto. You’d think that was simple. Not in Canada, and not with the gouging influence of Air Canada. For a simple connecting flight from Ottawa to Toronto costs the same as the flight from Toronto to Portugal. How can that be possible? In what parallel universe can it cost $600 per person to get from one city in Canada to another that is a four-hour drive away? And let’s not pretend there are other feasible solutions: other airlines are effectively blocked from offering a service at a convenient time; VIA Rail is cheaper ($150 per person), but its trains are regularly delayed, sometimes by 4-plus hours; the bus service is non-existent; parking at Pearson airport (after a 4-hour drive) is being offered at $450 for just over 2 weeks. Then I tried to redeem my points – only to find it would cost me MORE to use all my points and pay a user fee than it would do to purchase a ticket! How can any of this be acceptable? In an organised country (ahem), there would be a train that takes you from one city to the next, deposits you at the airport, and brings you back for a reasonable fee. Connecting flights would be convenient and affordable. A bus service would run. But this, sigh, is North America.
 
Outside of this, I took Ottawacker Jr. to the park and made him run (under the guise of soccer training). I downloaded photos from his trip to Victoria earlier this year. I did some work for New Zealand. Then I came downstairs, cooked meatballs in a rose sauce, and sat and sulked for a while about the price of tickets to Pearson frigging airport.