Air Canada strikes again!

No, no... not THAT kind of strike... ;)

Air Canada, with no warning or publicity decided that as of May 1st, they will no longer accept any form of payment other than credit card... for IN CABIN purchases. So, if you want to eat, you have to buy a meal... but you've got to put it on your credit card. Junior wants a chocolate bar? That'll be $2... on your Visa. You want a pillow? A blanket? That'll be $5... on your Master-card. You want to buy that duty-free bottle of perfume in-flight? That'll be $87... plastic only, and no, we don't take debit.

WTF?

I don't make purchases under $10 on my Visa. Why not? Because it tends to make the fraud department suspicious, and personally I'd really rather not find myself in a foreign country with a cancelled credit card because my airline wouldn't sell me food for cash. yeesh.

but my favourite bit is this... Air Canada spokesperson Peter Fitzpatrick was quoted in the Toronto Star thus:
"“This move is a benefit for customers and limits currency issues. Most people don’t travel without a credit card. This policy speeds up the service. Flight attendants don’t have to make change.”"

Really? A credit card transaction is going to be faster than a flight attendant making change from the bucket on their cart? So I guess you're not taking imprints of the cards and/or requiring signatures, then. Nevermind checking that the signature on the card matches the one on the receipt. Oh, wait... you're mid-air... are you going to do authorization requests mid-air on the air-phones? 'cuz that seems financially safe to me. [/sarcasm] Umm... pass. I don't even like this new policy a lot of places seem to have adopted of not requiring signatures for purchases under $50 (or whatever insane threshold they're using... I saw a signature-less $120 transaction last week). And no, those weren't chip & PIN cards.

So I can't bring a carry-on big enough to include a sweater, blanket, travel pillow, and food... and now I can't buy any of those things on the plane for CASH (you know... ACTUAL MONEY instead of THEORETICAL money a la credit card)... explain to me again why I'd be willing to pay more to fly Air Canada?

Oh, and before anyone suggests WestJet (which I will never willingly fly again for a whole other set of reasons)... they're also looking into adopting the policy, apparently.

GAH!