Good morning from Calgary, Alberta! My name is Alex,
and I’m off to Kelowna on board Air Canada Express’ CRJ-900!
The CRJ-900 is a regional airliner that seats around 76 people, and Jazz Aviation operates 35
of these on behalf of Air Canada Express. What’s kind of noteworthy though is that they actually
offer a proper domestic Business Class on these planes, with 12 seats in the first four rows. Jazz
also operates 15 smaller CRJ-200s for Air Canada Express, but in an all-economy layout instead.
I originally booked this flight in Economy, but Air Canada usually offers some
occasionally-compelling upgrades to Business Class during check-in, something that I
fall victim to more often than I’d like to admit.
This particular upgrade though, was the cheapest one I’ve ever seen before,
and even though the flight is a pretty short one, the free lounge access included plus AC’s usual
excellent Business Class service helped me… justify it to myself.
To be fair, I also haven’t done a video with this exact combination of class and airplane just yet,
so it would still be something new to cross off the list!
The first stop after security, naturally, was Air Canada’s Calgary Maple Leaf Lounge,
which was pretty full but not too too busy this morning. I’m sure it looks a
bit different when you’ve got multiple widebodies leaving at once though!
Some cold food here can still be taken to go in these containers, while hot food is
still brought to your table through the mobile order form, at least, as of filming this in May.
Other than that, it’s pretty much business as usual, and I sat down to enjoy some breakfast.
However, both the eggs and hash browns were a bit cold by the time they got to me,
but they still weren’t bad! It is worth noting that the offerings at
WestJet’s Elevation Lounge just down the hallway are a fair bit better, at least,
from what I’ve seen. I’ll definitely have to compare the two at some point!
Even so, the Maple Leaf Lounge is reliably consistent and a great place to wait before
a flight… A wait which was probably longer than the actual flight will be!
After wading through the May long weekend crowds, our plane for today was already there at gate C57,
this 5-year-old CRJ-900LR, registered as Charlie Golf Juliet Zulu Victor. This plane
was delivered to Jazz in 2017, and has flown under the Air Canada Express banner ever since.
Now, in terms of Business Class seats, these CRJ-900s and the Embraer 175s are the only AC
Express types to have them, since they tend to serve longer, more premium-heavy routes
as opposed to the Dash 8s… He says as he’s about to board a 30 minute flight to Kelowna.
For context, Kelowna is a city of around 150,000 located roughly halfway between
Calgary and Vancouver. Thanks to its location in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia,
it has a more temperate climate than the rest of Canada, making it a popular vacation destination.
The CRJ may seem like an odd choice of plane for this route, but it is busy enough that
WestJet even sends multiple daily 737s! Let’s go check out Business Class on a CRJ!
Despite being fairly new, this plane unfortunately doesn’t have the new
Atmosphere cabin from Bombardier, although some newer Express CRJs apparently do. Business
Class is set up with 4 rows of seats in a 2-1 configuration, and my seat is 4A.
There’s plenty of space as you’d usually expect in these types of seats,
and each comes equipped with their own in-flight entertainment screen,
something that’s pretty unique among CRJ operators!
4A also has a decent enough view, although I’d argue the seats in the
back are far more interesting since you’re right next to the engines.
During boarding, the crew handed out the usual extra CleanCare kit. Part of me wonders if and
when they’ll start phasing these out, but in the meantime I’ll happily take the freebies!
One quirk of the 2-1 configuration is that only one side’s overhead bins have any useful space,
and the other side is only useful for jackets or really small bags.
As boarding finished up, the cabin crew also gave out these water bottles and earbuds to Business
Class, and just asked if we’d like anything to eat after takeoff. Wanting to get my money’s worth,
I naturally said yes to second breakfast, and they said that they’d, quote, “do their best”
since today’s flight time was barely over half an hour. 37 minutes to be exact, which is not
a ton of time for them to actually heat it up, serve it, and then clear the trays for landing.
Eventually, we were on our way out to runway 35L, and here’s the takeoff out of Calgary.
As we head westbound, let’s take a look around the… somewhat unsurprisingly-empty Business
Class cabin. Each seat has the tray table in the armrest beside you, and folds out across your lap.
There’s also this footrest that folds out from underneath the seat in front.
In the seatback pocket, you’ll find the safety card for the CRJ-900,
the air sickness bag, and a leftover menu from the previous flight, which I believe was from Regina
to Calgary. If you ever wanted to know what they serve on that specific flight,
here you go! Nice to see that they have at least two options though.
As is standard on all of Air Canada’s jets with IFE screens there’s a power outlet and
a USB port available, both right in the seatback.
Flying west out of Calgary, I always hope for a clear day since you pass over the eastern slopes
of the Rocky mountains while still fairly low, but that wasn’t the case today. We still got a
glimpse at some beautiful snow-covered peaks through some breaks in the clouds though!
Being only 5 years old, this plane looks and feels very new,
but the one part that doesn’t is the legacy in-flight entertainment system.
Obviously, there’s not much to say about this that I haven’t already, but
I’m surprised they were still able to get some of these systems in 2017 when this plane was built.
Maybe they somehow used some older ones from retired A320s or 767s. Either way, given how new
these planes are, the (I hope) inevitable cabin refit would make these CRJs look very impressive.
In the meantime though, this system works just fine… For the most part.
Finally, the thing I was looking forward to the most on this flight was the meal service,
with a main course of a quiche, beans, and sausage, plus the usual croissant,
some fruit, and a glass for a drink, along with their metal cutlery.
Honestly, kudos to Air Canada for even offering this on a flight of this length, although I’m sure
it would be a different story if all 12 seats up front were filled. There were only 4 or 5 Business
seats actually occupied on this flight, so that no doubt made the service much more doable.
And for those curious, the rest of the cabin has 64 Economy seats in the standard 2-2 layout,
and just looking behind me,
I can tell that row 12 (the first row of Economy) has some seriously good legroom!
Interestingly though, despite it being smooth nearly the whole way, the seatbelt sign stayed
on the entire time, and I’m guessing that was to keep the aisles clear for the service.
And as you might’ve guessed,
the service finished just minutes after we started our descent into Kelowna.
Here’s a super scenic arrival onto YLW’s runway 16.
So that was Business Class on a CRJ! Generally speaking, you don’t really think of CRJs as having
much of a premium element to them, so going in, I was curious to see how AC did things with theirs.
The seats are all pretty standard, and they’re not
actually too different from the way some American carriers configure their CRJs.
Air Canada definitely stands out though by having physical in-flight entertainment that doesn’t
rely on having a device with you. It is an older system and all that, but the fact that it’s there
and that effort went into making sure CRJs of all planes had these, deserves some recognition.
For their service on board, Air Canada’s CRJ-900 Business Class also stands out big time, with them
serving an actual hot meal on such a short flight! For comparison, most American carriers on an
equivalent flight and in the equivalent seat would just give out packaged snacks and nothing else.
All in all though, Air Canada has a pretty impressive Premium offering on what is still
very much a regional jet, and I think they deserve a lot of credit
for making these some of the nicer CRJ-900s out there!
Thank you so much for watching another trip report with Air Canada, and I’ll catch you next time!