My Air Canada Business Class flight was offered on Air Canada Boeing 787–9 aircraft. This aircraft offered Air Canada’s best Business Class seat that is typically used on international flights. This cabin is marketed as Air Canada Signature Class on some domestic routes. If you’re lucky, you’ll get the opportunity to try out this cabin on a regular domestic route, for around the same price as a regular business class fare. Read on to see how my latest Air Canada flight was.

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This post is one chapter on a winter work trip within Canada. This trip was enhanced through Marriott Bonvoy Elite Status, Air Canada Aeroplan, Hertz Gold Plus Rewards. For parts of the trip, please see this index.

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Review: Air Canada Signature Business Class B787-9, Vancouver International Airport – Ottawa International Airport

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I had a brief work trip to Ottawa from the west coast of Vancouver. As the trip involved a week’s worth of meetings, I opted to stay on at the end for a little personal leisure “add on”.

Today’s fare options had me on a non stop Air Canada Business Class Vancouver – Ottawa trip. The outbound travel was on the morning non stop flight. It is a flight that is typically priced at a premium on a Monday morning. Despite this, I found a decent fare that was within our company’s travel policy.

I would later return on the same Air Canada Business Class Ottawa – Vancouver trip, without having to take a connection in either direction. In order to save costs, I ended up on the first morning flight out of Ottawa airport an early morning hour of 6 AM departure.

Checking into Air Canada Business Class:

As per usual, I checked in using the Air Canada app through my smartphone. I received my pre-assigned seat (2A) on the shady “non sunny” side of the plane. Consistent with a paid Air Canada Business Class ticket, I was placed into boarding group 1, which was the highest possible boarding group.

I used a digital boarding card, briefly stopping by an Air Canada kiosk to get a paper boarding card re-print. While the digital boarding card is fine under almost all circumstances, it’s still nice to have a paper card to save on the iPhone battery.

I briefly stopped into visit the Air Canada Maple Leaf Lounge – Vancouver Domestic, access which was included in the business class ticket. As my home lounge, since I’ve reviewed and visited this place many times before, I won’t do so again.

Air Canada
Business Class
YVR – YOW (Vancouver International Airport – Ottawa International Airport)
AC 342 – Business Class (P)

8:15 AM – 3:45 PM
Feb 12, 2024
Booked: Boeing 787-9
Flown: Boeing 787-9

On Board Air Canada Business Class:

Air Canada occasionally runs a smaller wide body aircraft on the Vancouver – Ottawa route. When I’ve been lucky enough to fly this route with a wide body aircraft, it’s usually in the form of a Boeing 787-9 series aircraft.

This aircraft features the Collins Aerospace Business Class seat, which offers a reverse herringbone fully flat seat. Despite being the best business class seat in the carrier’s network, the Vancouver – Ottawa route doesn’t usually get fully marketed as Air Canada Signature Business Class. However, you can see some Signature Branding through the menu, and in various food and beverage touch points on the journey.

For today’s flight, I entered the Air Canada Business Class Boeing 787-9 cabin. The wide body cabin is set up with eight rows of business class in a 1 – 2 – 1 configuration.

The Air Canada wide body cabin still looks great after being in service for many years. The whites, blacks and greys look contemporary and professional. The cabin has an air of exclusivity to it. In my opinion, it’s one of the sharpest looking business class cabins in North America.

I found my way to my assigned Seat 2A, which was the second seat from the front on the left hand side of the plane. As would be expected, I had no issues storing my carry on luggage in the overhead bins, as the cabin and it’s available space is quite low density compared to a narrow body configuration.

In terms of seat comfort, the Air Canada Business Class seat was exceptionally comfortable to fall into for a longer flight. With a seat that converted comfortably to a recline feature, in addition to a fully flat bed, there isn’t a much more comfortable way to travel.

Waiting at the seat was a 500 ml bottle of Naya water, a printed menu and a pair of headphones sealed in a plastic wrap. There was also a pillow and light blanket available for this trans continental flight.

The large television monitor offered photographs of the destination. In this case, there were winter photographs of Parliament buildings under snow, along with the Ottawa River under ice.

The Air Canada Business Class seat makes a great first impression. The seat offers a comfortable space in order to rest, relax, work or watch movies. It is especially comfortable for a trans continental flight, when you could be flying on a smaller recliner seat. If you can find an Air Canada Signature Class seat for your transcontinental flight, I highly recommend it.

Pre Departure Services:

While most United States carriers offer an open bar pre-departure beverage, Air Canada simply offers a small bottle of Naya Water which was waiting on the seat. Occasionally, there is a purser introduction during the time on the ground. However, today, it was silent on the purser introductions.

During the pre-departure period, the flight attendants also passed out a printed breakfast menu. Air Canada continues to offer a printed menu, which is a great touch that makes the service feel more upscale.

It’s worth mentioning that if you’re flying Air Canada Signature Business Class on their wide-body aircraft, you’ll have access to a cappuccino maker under the beverage list. Those enjoying a breakfast during their flight will have access to barista style coffees, including espresso and cappuccino. This is an advantage over those that are flying on narrow body aircraft which do not offer anything quite so fancy.

The Air Canada Business Class product offered a through wine list. Air Canada tends to use cheaper labels with a short descriptive biography, that sound a lot more interesting than they actually are.

Like British Airways, Air Canada has contracted with Bottega sparking wine for their domestic sparking wine product. If the wines were not your thing, Air Canada offered Port along with some mainstream spirits and liquors.

While the wine and spirit was much larger than expected in comparison to a narrow body flight, the product wasn’t over the top exciting as a result of the fairly mainstream labels.

The Meal: Breakfast

Todays flight was about four hours and thirty minutes marked at two hours and forty minutes gate to gate. After about one hour of flight time, breakfast was served.

The breakfast service started with a warmed towel service. Air Canada towels aren’t super luxurious. Instead, they are pretty standard variety and more functional than fancy.

Breakfast today consisted of the very familiar parsley omelette with a parmsean spinach and chicken sausage, hash brown potatoes and tomato chutney. There have been many variations of this menu item on the Air Canada Business Class breakfast menu for several years. Unfortunately, the taste has not changed and the dish isn’t all that inventive or engaging.

Breakfast was served with a firm ciabatta styled warmed roll, īögo yoghurt, along with mixed fruits.

I usually don’t take the alternate non egg option as it’s usually meatless. Like I’ve previously reported, the parsley omelette hasn’t improved much over time. Along with others, the chicken sausage was fairly dry, and the hash brown potatoes were fairly limp.

In Fight Entertainment:

During the flight, I played around with the in flight entertainment system. The flight entertainment system offered a large easy to view screen with movies, television shows and a moving map that allowed for great location spotting.

During the flight, the flight attendants came around with bottled Naya water service. The water was served in an attractive looking glass, which was a nicer touch than some american carriers that typically serve in plastic cups.

Second Service: A Snack Basket

While I settled into James’ Bond’s For Your Eyes Only, Air Canada came around with a snack basket. There weren’t too many items in the snack basket, so I settled on Miss Vickies Original Recipe potato chips and an Canada Dry Ginger Ale with ice.

After the snack basket was passed through the cabin, there was an offer of warmed mixed nuts that mostly consisted of salted almonds.

There wasn’t much to do other than stare out of the window at the canadian landscape.

Landing at Ottawa International Airport:

We had a fairly quick landing at Ottawa International Airport. Since there is never usually any traffic at Ottawa International Airport, it was a quick arrival without any delays.

We arrived to Ottawa International Airport at Gate 28 and parked next to a Westjet Boeing 737-800 aircraft.

With a small airport, it was a quick walk towards baggage claim. I picked up my skis and ski gear without much delay.

After a week’s worth of meetings, staying at the Ottawa Marriott Hotel (which I’d reviewed on a previous trip), I’d head off to the Courtyard Burlington Hotel and a few days of skiing at Stowe Mountain, Vermont, USA.

The Bottom Line: Air Canada Business Class B787-9

The Air Canada Business Class on the Boeing 787–9 is an exceptionally comfortable way to fly on a transcontinental flight. While it was not specifically marketed as an Air Canada Signature Class flight, it contained many of it’s features.

The best part of the flight was the comfortable Collins Aerospace reverse herringbone business class seat. While the food was better than you might expect on a narrow body flight, and the wine list was more extensive, both the food and the wine were fairly average and even a little bit low rent in flavour and taste.

Still, there is no more comfortable way to fly across Canada. I would return to an Air Canada wide-body aircraft in signature class any day.

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If you’ve flown Air Canada Business Class on their wide body aircraft, do you approve of the reverse herribone configuration ?

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