[TRAVEL] Aeroplan Reward Flight Review Between Ottawa (YOW) and Tokyo (NRT)
I cannot believe that this happened to me again. On my way to the Tokyo Narita Airport, the train got delayed again. Unlike the Air Transat experience, this experience turned out differently. I do understand that it really wasn’t Air Transat’s fault as discussed in the comments section, but now I have a similar experience to Compare with.
Here is a breakdown of how the overall reward flight went:
| United Airlines | Ottawa, Ottawa Int’l (YOW) Wed 25-Mar 2015 06:00 |
Washington, Dulles Int’l (IAD) Wed 25-Mar 2015 07:47 |
| United Airlines | Washington, Dulles Int’l (IAD) Wed 25-Mar 2015 13:15 |
Tokyo, Narita (NRT) Thu 26-Mar 2015 16:30 |
| United Airlines | Tokyo, Narita (NRT) Tue 7-Apr 2015 17:10 – Terminal 1 |
San Francisco, San Francisco Int’l (SFO) Tue 7-Apr 2015 10:30 – Terminal I (Int.) |
| United Airlines | San Francisco, San Francisco Int’l (SFO) Tue 7-Apr 2015 13:17 – Terminal 3 |
Vancouver, Vancouver Int’l (YVR) Tue 7-Apr 2015 15:34 – Terminal M |
| Air Canada | Vancouver, Vancouver Int’l (YVR) Tue 7-Apr 2015 17:10 – Terminal M |
Ottawa, Ottawa Int’l (YOW) Wed 8-Apr 2015 00:51 |
No nasty layovers to worry about, but definitely not the most directly route to Japan. That being said, this route costed my wife and I 150,000 Aeroplan points plus $276, which comes out to 75,000 points and $138 per person. To me, this was a pretty good use of my Aeroplan points considering that one of the legs was Air Canada.
Most of the trip was pretty smooth sailing. The Washington to Tokyo leg was the longest flight I have ever been on, over 12 hours of continuous flight with 3 meals. We had our personal TV screens to help us pass the time faster.
The train delay was caused on our way to the Tokyo Narita Airport to head back to Canada. We booked our train ticket for 2:03pm and suppose to arrive at Narita at 2:57pm, giving us ample time for our 5:10pm departure flight to San Francisco. The train got stuck from 2:17pm to 3:13pm, losing us almost an hour because of an incident along the train. We do not speak Japanese, so we did not fully understand the whole message, but that was the wording in English. We debated whether to take a taxi, because by 2:29pm they told us the train would depart at 3:00pm.
We ended up taking a risk. We arrived at the airport at 4:10pm and made it to the check in counter at 4:15pm only to find out that our flight got bumped earlier to 4:55pm, so we only had 40 minutes left. Even we went received our email notification it still said 5:10pm. It was such a last minute change that the check in counter manually wrote the change on our boarding pass because it wasn’t even change on her system.
That’s right! We actually received our boarding passes. We couldn’t believe it. By the time we reached the counter, we assumed that we would have to rebook and probably pay some penalties. Instead, things worked out in our favour. We received our boarding passes, went through security and immigration, straight to our flight. So 3 thumbs up to United Airlines and the attendant on that!
Also a notable mention, the Air Canada flight from Vancouver back to Ottawa was probably the most comfortable leg out of all our flights. Not because it was a short route, but because the whole flight experience, was enjoyable.
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